U.C  BERKELEY  UBRARY 


UC-NRLF 


B    3    S7T    b^fi 


The  Influence  of  Aeschylus  and 

Euripides  on  the  Structure  and 

Content  of  Swinburne's  Atalanta 

in  Calydon  and  Erechtheus 


BY  MARION  CLYDE  WIER 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED     IN     PARTIAL     FULFILLMENT     OF     THE     REQUIREMENTS 

FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 


GEORGE  WAHR,  Publisher 

ANN  ARBOR,  MICH. 
1920 


w^ 


The  Influence  of  Aeschylus  and 

Euripides  on  the  Structure  and 

Content  of  Swinburne's  Atalanta 

in  Calydon  and  Erechtheus 


BY  MARION  CLYDE  WIER 


A  DISSERTATION 

SUBMITTED     IN     PARTIAL     FULFILLMENT     OF     THE     REQUIREi^ENTg 

FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF  DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 

IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  MICHIGAN 


GEORGE  WAHR,  Publisher 

ANN  ARBOR,  MICH. 

1920 


JSife  (SolUgiate  ^rraii 

GEORGE  BANTA  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 

MENASHA,  WIS. 

1920 


CONTENTS 


Swinburne's  debt  to  Classical  literature 1 

His  scholarship 1 

His  preferences 2 

Characteristics 2 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS 

Manner  of  imitation 4 

Motto 4 

Refrain 4 

Title 5 

STYLE 

Piled-up  adjectives 5 

Irony 6 

Litotes 6 

Puns 7 

Word  order 7 

Epic  touch 8 

Force 8 

Structure 8 

THE  INFLUENCE  OF  EURIPIDES 

Swinburne's  knowledge  of  Euripides 10 

Swinburne's  use  of  Euripides'  plots 10 

Swinburne's  use  of  Euripides'  fragments 10 

Sentimentality  and  rhesis 13 

Sophistrj' 16 

Rhetoric 17 

Eros  tyrannus 17 

The  supreme  evil 18 

MIXED  INFLUENCE 
Characterization 

Althaea 22 

Meleager. 38 

Erechtheus 44 

Praxithea 46 

Attitude  to  the  gods 27 


458688 


c 


SWINBURNE'S  DEBT  TO  CLASSICAL  LITERATURE 

Swinburne's  Debt  Conceded.  Swinburne's  debt  to  Greek 
literature  is  conceded  by  all  who  are~competent  to  express  aiT 
opinion  on  the  subject.  Skeptics  may  settle  the  question  by  a 
casual  readingof  such  works  as  Phaedra,  Itylus,  Anactoria,  Hymn 
to  Proserpine,  Sapphics,  At  Eleusis,  Hymn  to  Man,  Genesis, 
Teiresias,  The  last  Oracle,  To  Victor  Hugo,  Two  Leaders,  The 
Armada,  Neap-tide,  Thalassius,  On  the  Cliflfs,  Song  for  the  Cen- 
tenary of  Walter  Savage  Landor,  Athens,  Herse,  Nine  Years  Old, 
Aperotos  Eros,  and  Nympholept.  The  evidence  will  be  con- 
vincing. BuMn  addition  to  these  we  have  Atalanta  in  Calydon 
and  Erechtheus,  both  in  their  technique  Greek  plays  of  a  high 
order.  Of  Erechtheus  Edmond  Gosse  says:  "It  is  the  most 
Greek  of  all  the  compositions  of  Swinburne,  because  it  follows, 
with  the  greatest  success,  closely  and  yet  vividly,  the  exact  classical 
models.  It  is  not  merely  Greek,  but  it  is  passionately  Athenian, 
and  Athens  is  considered,  not  as  a  theme  of  antiquarian  curiosity, 
hut  as  the  living  symbol  of  the  virtue  of  citizenship,"  Woodberry 
says  of  Swinburne:  "He  moved  toward  a  reproduction  of  both 
the  Greek  and  the  English  antique,  Atalanta  in  Calydon  was  his 
first  experiment  in  this  way,butErechtheus,  his  second  Greek  play, 
was  more  perfect  in  the  success  that  it  aimed  at."  Swinburne's 
method  of  using  Aeschylus  and  Euripides  to  facilitate  the  attain- 
ment of  this  end,  it  is  the  object  of  the  following  pages  to  make 
clear. 

Scholarship.  Both  friends  and  critics  attest  Swinburne's 
scholarship, — a  scholarship  that  not  only  comprehended  the 
literature  of  his  own  and  foreign  languages,  but  extended  even  to 
a  facility  in  the  use  of  them  as  media  of  literary  expression,  "No 
Englishpoet  has  ever  had  so  wide  and  familiar  acquaintance  with 
the  poetry  of  foreign  climes.  He  began  with  a  felicitous  command 
of  the  classical  and  romance  languages.  He  took  the  Taylorian 
prize,  in  his  college  days,  for  French  and  Italian,  and  won  other 
similar  distinction  in  the  ancient  tongues.  He  has  written,  as  a 
poet,  in  Greek,  Latin,  and  French  with  literary  mastery,"  (Wood- 
berry,)  Edmund  Gosse  voices  the  same  opinion,  as  does  Swin- 
burne's lifelong  friend  Redesdale,    Ruskin  says,  "He  knows  Greek, 


2  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

Latin,  French  as  well  as  he  knows  English — can  write  splendid 
verses  with  equal  ease  in  any  of  the  four  languages — knows  nearly- 
all  the  best  literature  of  the  four  languages  as  well  as  I  know — well 
— better  than  I  know  anything." 

Assimilation  of  Greek  Authors.  At  Eton  Swinburne  was 
devoted  to  that  charming  anthology,  the  old  Eton  Poetae  Graeci, 
to  which  he  owed  his  earliest  introduction  to  Theocritus  and 
Alcaeus,  and  on  which  was  founded  his  life-long  passion  for  Sappho.  , 
(Gosse.)  /The  same  writer  tells  us  that  Swinburne  was  so  devoted 
to  Aeschyms  that  he  carried  in  his  mind  practically  the  whole  of 
the  Oresteia,  and  asserts  that  there  are  those  still  living  who  bear/ 
witness  to  his  ability  to  quote  Aeschylus  as  long  as  any  auditor' 
had  the  patience  to  listen  to  him.  ''He  delighted  in  repeating 
other  poetry,  and  was  particularly  ready  to  spout  the  dramas  of 
Aeschylus,  when  he  would  gradually  become  intoxicated  by  "the 
sonority  of  the  Greek,  and  would  dance  about  the  room  in  the 
choral  passages,  making  a  very  surprising  noise." 

Assimilation  of  Greek.  The  Greek  elegiacs  prefixed  to 
Atalanta  in  Calydon  reveal  the  extent  of  Swinburne's  early 
assimilation  of  the  diction  and  phraseology  of  that  language, 
while  his  more  intensely  Greek  Erechtheus  shows  how  this  process 
went  on  through  the  years  that  followed  the  composition  of  his 
first  Greek  tragedy.  Of  the  significance  of  this  gift  Swinbutne 
himself  seems  well  aware,  for  he  says:  "The  faculty  of  assimila- 
tion is  most  important  and  is  to  be  distinguished  from  imitation. 
It  is  one  of  the  surest  and  strongest  signs  of  strong  and  original 
genius." 

Preferences.     With   Swinburne's   love   of    Greek    went    a 

strongly'inarked  preference  for  certain  Greek  authors  and  a  dislike 

of  others  that  was  equally  intense.      To  him  Aeschylus  was  the 

{  "godlike   father   of   tragic   poetry,"     while    Euripides   was  "the 

\:lumsiest  of  botchers  that  ever  floundered  through  his  work  as 

dramatist."     But  in  spite  of  his  distaste,  he  felt  the  spell  of  the 

botcher,  from  whom  he  borrowed,  on  occasion,  as  freely  as  he 

borrowed  from  the  godlike  father  of  tragic  song. 

Characteristics  In  fact  a  marked  characteristic  of  Swinburne's 

tragic  style  is  the  introduction  of  Aeschylean 

ideas  treated  in  the  Euripidean  manner, — the  presentation  of  a 

character    cast   in    the    Aeschylean    mould,    but    endowed    with 

Euripidean  psychology. 


) 


"I 

M 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

SWINBURNE'S  DEBT  TO  AESCHYLUS 

Swinburne's  passion  for  Aeschylus,  unlike  Dionysus' 
Euripidou,  underwent  neither  change  nor  moderation.  Throughout 
his  long  career  he  regarded  the  Greek  tragedian  as  a  god  who 
towered  above  other  gods;  and  it  was  from  his  temple  that  he  got 
the  inspiration  that  bore  up  his  own  song  in  its  most  sublime 
flights.     In  both  prose  and  verse  he  sings  his  praise  whenever 
occasion  arises  to  speak  of  what  is  most  precious  and  potent  in 
the  hearts  of  men.     To  quote  him  while  commending  another 
is  high  praise.     Speaking  of  Victor  Hugo,  he  says:  "his  hand 
has  never  been  firmer,  his  note  more  clear  than  now: 
en  yap  Oeodev  KaraTPeLei 
Tret^o)  fioXirdv 
iiKKg.  ^viJL(})VTOs  aloip. 
A  character  of  Hugo's  he  pictures  as  "One  of  those  Aeschylean 
women,  a  monstrous  goddess,  whose  tone  of  voice  'gave  a  sort 
of   Promethean   grandeur   to   her  furious   and   amorous   words 
who  had  in  her  the  tragic  and  titanic  passion  of  the  women  of  the 
Eleusinian  feasts   'seeking  the  Satyrs  under  the  stars.'  "     And 
again  "It  is  Aeschylus  .  .  .  who  fills  the  bitter  air  of  the  Scythian 
ravine  with  music  of  wings  and  words  more  sweet  than  sleep  to 
the  weary,  with  notes  of  heavenly  pity  and  love  unsubduable  by 
fear;  who  shows  us  with  one  touch  of  terrible  tenderness  the  maiden 
agony  of  Iphigenia,  smiting  with  the  piteous  dart  of  her  eye  each 
one  of  the  ministers  of  sacrifice,  in  dumb  show  as  of  a  picture 
striving  to  speak  to  them ;  who  throws  upon  the  most  fearful  scene 
in  all  tragedy  a  flash  of  pathos  unspeakable,  when  Clytemnestra 
bares  before  the  sword  of  her  son  the  breast  that  suckled  him  as 
he  slept."     He  never  wearies  of  "the  music  that  Aeschylus  set  - 
to  verse,  the  music  that  made  mad,  the  upper  notes  of  the  psalm   i 
strong  and  shrill  as  a  sea-wind,  the  'bull-voiced'  bellowing  under-   \ 
song  of  those  dread  choristers  from  somewhere  out  of  sight,  the    ^ 
tempest  of  tambourines  giving  back  thunder  to  the  thunder,  the 
fury  of  divine  lust  that  thickened  with  human  blood  the  hill- 
streams  of  Cithaeron."      With  what  delight  does  he  call  attention 
to  his  translation  from  the  Agamemnon. 

Ah,  ah  the  doom  (thou  knowest  whence  rang  that  wail) 

Of  the  shrill  nightingale! 

(From  whose  wild  lips  thou  knowest  that  wail  was  thrown) 


4  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

For  round  about  her  have  the  great  gods  cast 
A  wing-borne  body  and  clothed  her  close  and  fast 
With  a  sweet  life  that  hath  no  part  in  moan. 
But  me,  for  me  (how  hadst  thou  heart  to  hear) 
Remains  a  sundering  with  the  two-edged  Spear. 

Referring  to  Aeschylus'  metaphor  of  a  lion's  whelp,  he  sings: 

The  best  men's  tongue  that  ever  glory  knew 

Called  that  a  drop  of  dew 

Which  from  the  breathing  creature's  kindly  womb 

Came  forth,  a  blameless  bloom. 

We  have  no  word,  as  had  those  men  most  high, 

To  call  a  baby  by.     (Herse) 

In  Comparisons  he  uses  the  figure  again. 

Child,  when  they  say  that  others 
Have  been  or  are  like  you, 
Babes  fit  to  be  your  brothers, 
Sweet  human  drops  of  dew, 
Bright  fruit  of  mortal  mothers, 
What  should  one  say  or  do? 

Manner  of  Imitation,  Sub-title  or  Motto.  Swinburne 
sometimes  states  his  theme  in  the  form  of  a  line  of  Aeschylus 
quoted  under  the  title  of  a  poem.  As  a  sub-title  of  the  Ode  on 
the  Proclamation  of  the  French  Republic  we  read 

atXLVOv  aiXivov  eiirk,  to  8'ev  vlkoltco. 

^  Refrain.  This  line  is  also  used  as  a  refrain  in  A  Year's 
Burden : 

Cry  wellaway,  but  well  befall  the  right. 

Under  The  Litany  of  Nations  occur  two  lines  from  The  Supplices, 
which  he  translates  at  the  close: 

fia  7a  fxa  7a  ^oq. 
(po^epov  airoTptire 

He  uses  as  a  motto  for  Two  Leaders  Eumenides  1034-5  which 
he  translates  as  a  close  for  the  last  stanza. 

Go  honored  hence,  go  home, 
Night's  childless  children;  here  your  hour  is  done; 
Pass  with  the  stars  and  leave  us  with  the  sun. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES         5 

Aeschylus  enjoys  the  company  of  Pindar  on  the  title  page  of 
Erechtheus,  and  also  supplies  the  theme  of  An  Autumn  Vision: 

^e(j)vpov  yiyavTos  avpa. 

Title.  Occasionally  we  find  an  Aeschylean  phrase  used  as 
the  real  title  of  a  poem,  as  Aperotos  Eros  (Choe.  600). 

STYLE 

Piled-up  Adjectives.  Swinburne  often  imitates  Aeschylus' 
piled-up  adjective  effects.  These  effects  exhibit  various  degrees 
of  complication. 

The  caught-up  choked  dry  laughters — 
And  her  mouth's  sad  red  heavy  rose  all  through — 
By  the  tideless  dolorous  inland  sea — 

Wliite-eyed  and  poison-finned,  shark-toothed  and  serpentine- 
curled — 
A  star  upon  your  birthday  burned, 

Whose  fierce  serene 
Red  pulseless  planet  never  yearned 
In  heaven,  Faustine. 
Villon  our  sad  bad  glad  mad  brother's  name — 
Bird  of  the  bitter  bright  gray  golden  morn — 

The  adorable  sweet  living  marvelous  strange  light  that  lightens  us — 
The  sea-forsaken  forlorn  deep  wrinkled  salt  slanting  stretches  of  sand — 

With  the  last  compare  Aeschylus,  Supp.  798  ff. 

Would  that  I  had  a  seat  in  the  air  on  high  where  the  vapory  clouds  turn  into 
snow;  or  that  there  were  some  smooth  inaccessible  summit-hid  solitary  hanging 
vulture-haunted  rock  to  be  witness  of  my  plunge  into  the  depths  below. 

This  usage  is  common  in  Aeschylus.  See  Persae  316,  940,  855, 
and  two  very  fine  examples,  Agamemnon,  154-5;  192-7.  Swin- 
burne may  have  had  the  last  passage  in  mind  when  he  wrote: 

but  we  for  all  our  good  things,  we 
Have  at  their  hands  which  fill  all  these  folk  full, 
Death,  barrenness,  child-slaughter,  curses,  cares. 
Sea-leaguer  and  land-shipwreck; 


and 


This  fair  live  youth  I  give  you  to  be  slain, 
Spent,  shed,  poured  out,  and  perish; 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

Swinburne  sometimes  abuses  the  device,  as: 

what  hath  he, 
The  man  that  hath  no  country?     Gods  nor  man 
Have  such  to  friend,  yoked  beast-like  to  base  life, 
Vile,  fruitless,  grovelling  at  the  foot  of  death, 
Landless  and  kinless  thralls  of  no  man's  blood, 
Unchilded  and  unmothered,  abject  limbs 
That  breed  things  abject;  but  who  loves  on  earth 
Not  friend,  wife,  husband,  father,  mother,  child. 
Nor  loves  his  own  life  for  his  own  land's  sake. 
But  only  this  thing  more,  more  this  than  all, 
He  loves  all  well,  and  well  of  all  is  loved, 
And  this  love  lives  forever. 

Dramatic  Irony.  Swinburne  is  quite  Aeschylean  in  his 
employment  of  dramatic  irony.  At  the  close  of  the  prologue  of 
the  Atalanta  the  speaker  prays  to  Artemis: 

"Help,  and  give  honor,  and  to  mine  hounds  good  speed  "^  This 
"good  speed"  is  echoed  with  grim  irony  by  Meleager  at  the  close  of 
his  first  speech  where  he  prays: 

That  this  great  hunt  with  heroes  for  the  hounds 
May  leave  thee  memorable  and  us  well  sped. 

A  fine  example  is  Althaea's  fond  hope  for  little  Helen  and  Clytem- 
nestra,  when  Meleager  pictures  to  her  their  sweet  childishness: 

Sweet  days  befall  them  and  good  loves  and  lords 
And  tender  and  temperate  honors  of  the  hearth, 
Peace,  and  a  perfect  life  and  blameless,  bed. 

There  is  an  Aeschylean  double  meaning  in  Althaea's  cry  when 
she  learns  that  the  boar  is  dead: 

Wherefore  be  glad  and  all  ye  give  much  thanks, 
For  fallen  is  all  the  trouble  of  Calydon. 

And  later, 

Some  bring  flowers  and  crown 
These  gods  and  all  the  lintel,  and  shed  wine, 
Fetch  sacrifice  and  slay; /or  heaven  is  good. 

Litotes.  Litotes  occurs  with  Aeschylean  frequency.  The 
following  are  characteristic  examples: 

Where  the  old  winds  cease  not  blowing,  and  all  the  night 
Thunders,  and  day  is  no  delight  to  men. 


V 


y 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES         7 

and 

And  in  their  moist  and  multitudinous  flower 
Slept  no  soft  sleep,  with  violent  visions  fed, 
The  blind  bulk  of  the  immeasurable  beast. 

The  following  is  an  example  of  irony  and  litotes  combined.  Althaea 
addresses  her  dead  brothers,  just  slain  by  Meleager. 

O  brethren,  O  my  father's  sons,  of  me 
Well-loved  and  well- reputed,  I  should  weep 
Tears  dearer  than  the  dear  blood  drawn  from  you 
But  that  /  knoiv  you  not  iincomjorted, 
Sleeping  no  shameful  sleep  however  slain, 
For  my  son  surely  hath  avenged  you  dead. 

Puns.  The  Greek  fondness  for  punning  on  proper  names 
appears  also  in  Swinburne.  A  few  examples  will  make  this  clear. 
Althaea  and  the  chorus  pun  on  the  name  Meleager. 

Althaea:     Wert  thou  not  called  Meleager  from  this  womb? 
Chorus:     A  grievous  huntsman  hath  it  bred  to  thee. 

Speaking  of  herself,  Althaea  says: 

My  name,  that  was  a  healing,  it  is  changed, 
My  name  is  a  consuming. 

So  Erechtheus  speaks  of  his  antagonist. 

Son  of  the  sea's  lord  and  our  first-born  foe, 
Eumolpus;  nothing  sweet  in  ears  of  thine 
The  music  of  his  making; 

Word^Order.  Swinburne  often  betrays  his  Greek  cast  of 
mind  by  his  word  order.  This  is  particularly  noticeable  in  the 
position  of  proper  nouns,  which  often  close  a  phrase  at  the  begin- 
ning of  a  line.     In  the  prologue  of  Erechtheus  we  find: 

A  strange  growth  grafted  on  our  natural  soil, 

A  root  of  Thrace  in  Eleusinian  earth, 

Set  for  no  comfort  to  the  kindly  land. 

Son  of  the  sea's  lord  and  our  first-born  foe, 

Eumolpus  ; 
and 

Then  one  shot  happier,  the  Cadmean  seer, 
Amphiaraus; 

This  position  of  the  participle  is  also  note  worthy.  See  Atalanta 
1363, 


»  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

^\nd  all  they  praised  the  gods  with  mightier  heart, 
Zeus,  and  all  gods,  but  chiefest  Artemis, 
Seeing; 

And  Erechtheus,  267 

I  have  not  heart  to  honor,  or  dare  hold 
More  than  I  hold  thee  of  the  gods  in  hate, 
Hearing; 

For  a  similar  Aeschylean  usage  see  Sept.  412: 

airapTOiv  b'a-iv'  avdpu^v,  o}v  "Aprjs  e^etcraro, 
pi^ufj.'  avelraL,  Kapra  d'ear'  kyx^opLOs, 
MeKavLTTTOs. 

and  Sept.  532,  545;  Persae,  206,  255;  Prom.  369;  Agam.  513,  813, 
1436;  Eum.  7,  8. 

Epic  Touch.  Sv/inburne  resembles  Aeschylus  in  the  employ- 
ment of  epic  reminiscences  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  epic.  The 
Iliad  stands  open  in  the  second  episode  of  Atalanta,  where  Althaea 
and  Meleager  review  the  gathering  of  the  huntsmen;  the  clang  of 
arms  resounds  in  the  battle  with  the  boar.  In  this  episode  we 
get  also  a  complete  catalogue  of  heroes  engaged  in  the  hunt.  The 
thunder  of  battle  in  Erechtheus  fairly  outroars  that  of  the  Septem. 

Force.  In  addition  to  these  Aeschylean  qualities  we  find 
another,  force; — force  in  diction,  metaphor,  versification,  charac- 
terization, and  action,  that  is  distinctly  Aeschylean.  This  is 
apparent  in  Atalanta  in  Calydon,  and  also  in  Erechtheus.  Al- 
though the  former  transgresses  by  its  length  the  proper  measure 
of  a  Greek  play,  it  moves  rapidly  and  unerringly;  it  is  full  of  the 
atmosphere  of  the  heroic,  and  of  the  potency  of  divinity.  It 
presents  the  inevitable  laws  of  destiny,  even  working  them  out 
before  our  eyes.]  In  Erechtheus  we  are  made  aware  of  strength 
of  character  great  enough  to  impel  every  member  of  the  most 
noble  family  of  Athens  to  self-sacrifice  for  dear  'mother  land.' 

Dramatic  Structure.  A  careful  examination  of  Atalanta 
in  Calydon  and  Erechtheus  will  reveal  their  Aeschylean  model. 
The  prologue,  parodos,  episodes,  and  stasima  are  structurally 
Aeschylean  and  are  motivated  in  the  true  Aeschylean  manner 
and  reveal  the  Aeschylean  unity  which  makes  it  almost  impossible 
to  separate  a  passage  from  its  context  without  injuring  the  whole. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 


EURIPIDEAN  INFLUENCE 

Swinburne  always  affected  a  hatred  of  Euripides.  Of  this 
Gosse  says: 

Swinburne's  hatred  of  Euripides  was  never  expressed  more  violently  than 
when  he  was  writing  Erechtheus,  perhaps  because  he  was  unable  to  forget  that  he 
was  using  a  theme  which  had  already  passed  through  the  hands  of  Euripides. 
Indeed,  he  was  not  merely  fully  aware  of,  but  grudgingly  consented  to  adopt 
the  argument  saved  for  us  by  the  orator  Lycurgus,  and  the  long  fragment,  a  speech 
of  Praxithea,  which  are  enough  to  give  us  some  inkling  of  Euripides'  treatment.  A 
clxmisy  reviewer  described  Swinburne's  play  as  a  "translation  from  Euripides," 
ignorant  of  the  fact  that  the  supposed  original  disappeared,  save  for  the  bit  pre- 
served by  Lycurgus,  before  the  christian  era.  Swinburne  was  too  furious  to  see 
how  funny  this  blunder  was,  but  it  provoked  from  him  a  private  protest  of  great 
importance.  In  a  letter  to  a  friend  (Jan.  2,  1876)  he  said:  "A  fourth  form  boy 
could  see  that  as  far  as  Erechtheus  can  be  said  to  be  modeled  after  any  body,  it  is 
modeled  throughout  after  the  earliest  style  of  Aeschylus.  I  did  introduce  (instead 
of  a  hint  and  a  verse  or  two  acknowledged  in  my  notes)  a  good  deal  of  the  'long 
and  noble  fragment'  referred  to,  into  Praxithea's  first  long  speech,  but  the  trans- 
lated verses  (I  must  say  it)  were  so  palpably  and  pitiably  inferior  both  in  thought 
and  expression  to  the  rest,  that  the  first  persons  I  read  that  part  of  the  play  to  in 
MS.,  knowing  nothing  of  Greek,  remarked  the  falling-off  at  once — the  discrepancy 
and  blot  on  the  face  of  my  work — so  I  excised  the  sophist,  only  keeping  a  hint 
or  two  of  his  best  lines.  If  this  sounds  'Outrecuidant'  or  savouring  of  'Surquedry' 
you  may  remember  that  I  have  always  maintained  it  is  far  easier  to  overtop  Euripi- 
des by  the  head  and  shoulder  than  to  come  up  to  the  waist  of  Sophocles  or  the  knee 
of  Aeschylus." 

He  preserved  this  prejudice  against  Euripides  from  school  time  to  the  grave 
and  he  always  asserted  that  he  was  supported  in  it  by  the  conversation  of  Jowett. 
Neither  the  stoicism  nor  the  scepticism  of  Euripides  was  agreeable  to  Swinburne, 
and  what  did  not  please  him  excessively  he  was  apt  to  reject  altogether. 

In  Swinburne's  Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry  we  find  the 
following: 

The  critic  who  once  wrote  to  me  and  rejoiced  my  very  soul  by  writing  "I  have 
been  reading  Euripides  lately  and  still  retain  my  old  and  bad  opinion  of  him— so- 
phist, sentimentalist,  sensationalist — no  Greek  in  the  better  sense  of  the  ternn." 

It  was  all  I  could  do  on  another  occasion  to  win  from  him  an  admission  of 
the  charm  and  grace  and  sweetness  of  the  shorter  and  sweeter  lyrics  which  redeem 
in  some  measure  the  reputation  of  the  dreariest  of  playwrights, — if  that  term  be  not 
over  complimentary  for  the  clumsiest  of  botchers  that  ever  floundered  through  his 
work  as  dramatist. 

"I  have  been  reading  Euripides  again,"  he  said,  "and  I  think  even  less  of  him 
than  I  did  :  he  is  immoral  when  he  is  irreligious,  and  when  he  is  religious  he  is  more 
immoral  still."     Pages  of  his  note-books  are  filled  with  depreciative  criticisms 

Cf.  Life  of  Benjamin  Jowett,  Vol.  2,  p.  68. 


10  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

of  the  poet.  "Monotonous,  insipid,  feeble,  immoral;  endless  commonplace — 
sophisticated  and  affected  in  expression,  as  well  as  in  thought — undignified  and 
exaggerated — Homer  and  other  tragedians  mixed  with  puerilities."  These  are 
general  criticisms,  and  the  same  spirit  appears  in  the  examination  of  each  play. 
Thus  of  the  Orestes  he  observes:  "Absolute  want  of  poetical  justice  in  the  Orestes; 
no  reason  for  the  treatment  of  Menelaus  and  Helen  except  that  they  are  only 
sympathizing,  and  therefore  said  to  be  false  friends;  still  less  for  the  treatment  of 
Hermione — gross  improbability!  Orestes  and  Electra  are  said  to  be  carefully 
watched,  and  yet  they  have  Helen  in  their  power,  and  her  foreign  guards.  The 
condition  in  which  the  spectator's  mind  is  left  in  all,  or  nearly  all  Euripides'  plays  is 
wholly  unsatisfactory." 

This  probably  accounts,  in  great  measure,  for  Swinburne's 
opinion  of  Euripides,  and  he  could  not  have  had  him  in  mind 
when  he  spoke  of  a  writer  renewing  'for  us  the  ancient  life  of 
his  models,  not  by  mechanical  and  servile  transcript  as  of  a  copy- 
ing clerk,  but  by  loving  and  reverent  emulation  as  of  an  original 
fellow-craftsman. ' 

Knowledge  of  Euripides.  But  whatever  his  opinion  of 
Euripides,  his  knowledge  of  his  works  was  evidently  great,  and 
whether  he  made  use  of  that  knowledge  in  a  spirit  of  reverent 
emulation,  it  is  impossible  to  say;  at  any  rate  he  certainly  made 
free  use  of  it. 

f  Plots.     Both  of  his  plots  are  based   on  Euripidean  plays. 

/        0  <JOifb%  EiiptTTiSTyj    opcifjLa    irepl  tov  avrov  'MeXedy pov  e^kOero,   Eur.   fr. 

'  Meleager,  and  reference  has  been  made  to  the  fragments  of 
his  Erechtheus,  preserved  by  Lycurgus.  Of  Meleager  we  have, 
in  the  edition  that  was  available  for  Swinburne,  fragments  that 
total  sixty  complete  lines  and  four  half  lines.  Of  these  Swinburne  i 
used  in  all  twenty-eight  lines.  For  the  motto  of  the  play  he  chose" 
fragment  536, 

/  Treat  well  the  living;  every  man,  once  dead,      ^ 
Is  dust  and  shadow;  naught  to  nothing  fled.        ' 

Swinburne  must  have  had  this  idea  in  mind 
The  Fragments  of  in  several  passages  in  the  play,  particularly 
THE  Meleager  in    the    last    speech    of    Meleager    himself. 

Fragment  519  gave  him  not  one  hint  but 
several.  520  served  as  a  beginning  of  the  chorus'  description  of 
the  king's  sacrifice.  Swinburne  makes  use  of  the  pun  on  the 
name  Meleager,  which  occurs  in  fragment  521,  and  is,  according 
to  Plato,  bad  etymology.     Swinburne  has  done  in  this  instance 


l-^ 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES        11 

what  is  rather  the  usual  thing  for  him, — he  had  made  two  lines 
of  one.     Althaea  asks, 

Wast  thou  not  called  Meleager  from  this  womb? 

to  which  the  chorus  replies, 

A  grievous  huntsman  hath  it  bred  for  thee. 
Fr.  521      Meleager  thou,  for  grievous  is  thy  hunting. 

Althaea,  watching  the  heroes,  asks, 

But  who  shows  next  an  eagle  wrought  in  gold 
That  flames  and  beats  broad  wings  against  the  sun 
And  with  void  mouth  gapes  after  emptier  prey? 

Meleager  replies. 

Know  by  that  sign  the  reign  of  Telamon 
Between  the  fierce  mouths  of  the  encountering  brine 
On  the  straight  reefs  of  twice-washed  Salamis. 
Althaea 

For  like  one  great  of  hand  he  bears  himself 
Vine-chapleted,  with  savours  of  the  sea, 
Glittering  as  wine  and  moving  as  a  wave. 

Fr.  534     Telamon,  eagle  of  gold  upon  his  shield, 

A  barrier  against  the  beast,  with  clustering  grapes 
His  head  enwreathed,  to  honor  Salamis, 
His  land  of  goodly  vines. 

The  same  fragment  characterizes  Atalanta,  and  shows  in  what 
repute  she  stood,  and  possibly  suggested  the  attitude  of  Swin- 
burne's Althaea  toward  her. 

Fr.  530        Arcadian  Atalanta  Cypris-scorned 
With  hounds  and  hunting  gear. 

Swinburne  calls  her  Arcadian  Atalanta,  snowy-souled,  and  gives 
a  description  of  her  hounds  and  equipment  in  the  contest  with 
the  boar.  From  the  same  fragment  we  get  a  suggestion  for  these 
lines  also: 

Ancaeus  great  of  hand,  an  iron  bulk. 
Two-edged  for  fight  as  the  ax  against  his  arm. 

cf.  fr.  534     Ancaeus  brandished  ax  with  blade  that  bit 

Both  ways. 
Fr.  531         An  iron-weighted  club  he  grasped  in  hand. 


12  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

And  to  make  use  of  the  rest  of  the  fragment  he  writes: 

Next  by  the  left  unsandaled  foot  know  thou 
The  sail  and  oar  of  this  Aetolian  land, 
Thy  brethren,  Toxeus,  and  the  violent-souled 
Plexippus,  ever  swift  with  hand  and  tongue. 

Euripides  says, 

Thestius'  sons. 
Their  left  foot  all  unshod,  but  on  the  right 
The  sandal,  thus  to  leave  them  light  of  foot, 
A  custom  held  of  all  Aetolian  men. 

The  nine  lines  in  this  fragment  seem  to  form  part  of  a  catalogue 
of  the  hunt.  Swinburne  saw  fit  to  incorporate  them  in  his  review. 
Althaea  plays  a  role  similar  to  that  of  Helen  on  the  wall,  but, 
reversing  the  situation,  as  is  the  habit  with  Swinburne's  characters, 
she  questions  her  son  about  the  men  gathering  for  the  hunt.  But 
see  Macrobius,  Sat.  5,  18,  17  Morem  vero  Aetolis  fuisse  uno 
tantum  modo  pede  calceato  in  bellum  ire  ostendit  clarissimus 
scriptor  Euripides  tragicus,  in  cuius  tragoedia  quae  Meleager 
inscribitur  nuntius  inducitur  describens  quo  quisque  habitu 
fuerit  ex  ducibus  qui  ad  aprum  capiendum  convenerant.  Not 
finding  enough  in  this  hint  to  supply  his  gallery,  Swinburne 
went  to  Aeschylus  and  borrowed  Tydeus  from  the  Septem  to 
serve  Althaea  as  a  comparison  for  her  son. 

Fr.  538         "Gods  that  face  the  sun" 

;s  similar  to 

Those  warder  gods  that  face  the  sun. 

Of  women  Althaea  says 

Praise  be  with  men  abroad ;  chaste  lives  with  us, 
Home-keeping  days  and  household  reverence. 

So 

fr.  521     A  woman  to  be  good  must  stay  at  home, 
Once  out  of  doors  she  is  of  little  worth. 

This  seems  to  be  the  idea  in  both  Swinburne's  play  and  that  of 
Euripides;  the  following  fragment  adds  weight: 

Fr.  522         If  labor  at  the  loom  should  fall  to  men. 

And  women  bear  the  brunt  of  wielding  arms, 
Then  from  their  skill  of  hand  all  fallen  away 
They  would  be  nothing  worth  nor  more  would  we. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  13 

Plexippus,  taunting  Meleager,  says, 

Why,  if  she  ride  among  us  for  a  man, 

Sit  thou  for  her  and  spin;  a  man  grown  girl 

Is  worth  a  woman  weaponed;  sit  thou  here. 

and  Atalanta,  speaking  of  herself,  says. 

Lest  one  revile  me,  a  woman,  yet  no  wife, 

That  bear  a  spear  for  spindle  and  this  bow  strung 

For  a  web  woven. 

Of  death  Meleager  says  to  his  father: 

Pray  thou  thy  days  be  long  before  thy  death, 
And  full  of  ease  and  kingdom,  seeing  in  death 
There  is  no  comfort  and  none  aftergrowth, 
Nor  shall  one  thence  look  up  and  see  day's  dawn 
Nor  light  upon  the  land  whither  I  go. 

So  in  fr.  533  we  read 

This  light  is  sweet;  the  darkness  under  earth 
Gives  no  delight  for  man  to  enter  in 
Even  in  a  dream;  and  I  though  grown  so  old 
Abominate  it;  never  wish  to  die. 

Fr.  543  is  just  one  word,  "He  offered  up  sacrifice,"  which  finds  its 
echo  in  "when  the  king  did  sacrifice," 

This  seems  on  the  whole  quite  a  number  of  hints  for  a  poet 
to  take  from  the  scanty  fragments  of  one  he  held  in  such  contempt. 

Fragments  of  Erechtheus.  Of  the  fragments  of  the 
Erechtheus  he  made  little  use,  but  somewhat  more  than  he  claimed 
in  the  letter  quoted  by  Gosse.  An  examination  of  the  fragment 
referred  to  (Nauck  362)  will  show  that  he  made  use  of  more  than 
a  hint  and  one  or  two  of  the  best  lines.  Moreover  fragment  370  of 
the  Erechtheus  seems  to  find  an  echo  in  Atalanta,  where  Althaea 
tells  her  son  of  the  glorious  old  age  that  comes  to  men  who  have 
done  great  deeds  and  thought  high  thoughts.  This  shows  that 
Swinburne  learned  early  the  value  of  material  found  in  the  tragic 
fragments;  he  certainly  made  free  use  of  whatever  appealed  to 
him  in  those  of  Aeschylus,  Sophocles,  and  Euripides. 

Sentimentality  and  Rhesis.  In  Swinburne,  Euripidean  sen- 
timentality often  appears  in  the  form  of  tender  reminiscence. 
It  is  seldom  indulged  in  when  the  person  to  whom  it  is  directed  is 
present,  although  that  sometimes  happens.      Althaea  makes  most 


14        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

use  of  it  in  Atalanta  in  Calydon  and  under  most  diverse  conditions. 
She  grows  sentimental  in  the  contemplation  of  her  own  unhappi- 
ness,  of  the  dreams  that  haunt  her,  her  absent  kin,  her  dead 
mother  Eurythemis,  her  own  solitude  when  bereft  of  her  brothers. 
Every  note  in  the  gamut  of  mother  love  is  played  upon.  The 
first  is  struck  in  the  long  rhesis  of  the  first  episode,  and  the  habit, 
established  early,  persists  to  the  end.  We  learn  all  the  details  of 
Meleager's  birth,  his  beauty,  his  audacity  in  trying  to  take  hold 
of  the  distafif  of  the  Fates, 

a  tenderer  thing 
Than  any  flower  of  fleshly  seed  alive. 

Then  in  sudden  contrast  with  this,  she  pictures  him  as  he  appears 
for  the  hunt. 

So  light  a  thing  was  this  man  grown  so  great 

Men  cast  their  heads  back,  seeing  against  the  sun 

Blaze  the  armed  man  carved  on  his  shield,  and  hear 

The  laughter  of  little  bells  along  the  brace 

Ring,  as  birds  singing  or  flutes  blown,  and  watch 

High  up  the  cloven  shadow  of  either  plume 

Divide  the  bright  light  of  the  brass  and  make 

His  helmet  as  a  windy  and  wintering  moon 

Seen  through  blown  cloud  and  plume-like  drift,  when  ships 

Drive,  and  men  strive  with  all  the  sea,  and  oars 

Break,  and  the  beaks  dip  under,  drinking  death; 

Yet  was  he  then  but  a  span  long,  and  moaned 

With  inarticulate  mouth  inseparate  words. 

And  with  blind  lips  and  fingers  wrung  my  breast 

Hard,  and  thrust  out  with  foolish  hands  and  feet. 

Murmuring;     (Cf.  Aesch.  Sept.  380-395.) 

This  is  a  very  good  example  of  an  Aeschylean  reminiscence 
set  in  the  Euripidean  manner. 

Meleager  is  the  true  son  of  his  mother  in  this  respect;  he 
indulges  in  fond  recollections  of  little  Helen  and  grave  Clytem- 
nestra,  like  pasturing  fawns  that  graze  and  fear  some  arrow.  The 
former  laughs  and  lightens  with  her  eyes  in  the  manner  of  the 
Aeschylean  lion  cub  raised  in  the  house  to  be  the  Ate  of  the 
inhabitants.  He  often  grows  sentimental  in  talking  with  his 
mother: 

For  what  thou  art  I  know  thee,  and  this  thy  breast 
And  thy  fair  eyes  I  worship  and  am  bound 
Toward  thee  in  spirit  and  love  thee  in  all  my  soul. 
For  there  is  nothing  terribler  to  men 
Than  the  sweet  face  of  mothers  and  the  might. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  15 

Sometimes  it  leads  him  into  a  hymeneal  figure,  as  when  speaking 
of  his  Argonautic  expedition  he  recalls  the  time  when 

The  first  furrow  in  virginal  green  sea 

Followed  the  plunging  plough  share  of  hewn  pine, 

a  figure  which  he  employs  again  when  in  the  exodos  he  addresses 
his  mother  for  the  last  time: 

Thou  too,  the  bitter  mother  and  mother-plague 
Of  this  my  weary  body, — thou  too,  queen. 
The  source  and  end,  the  sower  and  the  scythe. 
The  rain  that  ripens  and  the  drought  that  slays. 
The  sand  that  swallows  and  the  spring  that  feeds, 

To  make  me  and  unmake  me, — thou,  I  say, 
Lucret.  4,  1272  Althaea,  since  my  father's  ploughshare,  drawn 
Sept.  754  Through  fatal  seedland  of  a  female  field. 

Furrowed  thy  body,  whence  a  wheaten  ear 
Strong  from  the  sun  and  fragrant  from  the  rains 
I  sprang  and  cleft  the  closure  of  thy  womb, 
Mother,  I  dying  with  unforgetful  tongue 
Hail  thee  as  holy  and  worship  thee  as  just 
Who  art  unjust  and  unholy;  and  with  my  knees 
Would  worship,  but  thy  fire  and  subtlety, 
Dissundering  them,  devour  me; 

The  same  figure  of  generation  is  developed  with  a  rapturous 
delight  in  the  fourth  stasimon  of  Erechtheus,  and  also  serves  to 
show  how  Euripidean  Swinburne  can  make  an  Aeschylean  idea 
appear.  (Cf.  Aes.  fr.  Danaed.  44.)  ^V 

Even  Atalanta  becomes  sentimental  in  the  contemplation  of 
her  cold  sacred  life: 

I  shall  have  no  man's  love. 

Forever,  and  no  face  of  children  born 

Or  feeding  lips  upon  me  or  fastening  eyes 

Forever,  nor  being  dead  shall  kings  my  sons 

Mourn  me  and  bury,  and  tears  on  daughters'  cheeks 

Burn;  but  a  cold  and  sacred  life,  but  strange, 

But  far  from  dances  and  the  back-blowing  torch, 

Far  off  from  flowers  or  any  bed  of  man 

Shall  be  my  life  forever;  me  the  snows 

That  face  the  first  o'  the  morning,  and  cold  hills 

Full  of  the  land-wind  and  sea-traveling  storms 

And  many  a  wandering  wing  of  noisy  nights 

That  know  the  thunder  and  hear  the  thickening  wolves — 


16  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

Me  the  utmost  pine  and  footless  frost  of  woods 
That  talk  with  many  winds  and  gods,  the  hours 
Rerisen  and  white  divisions  of  the  dawn, 
Springs  thousand-tongued  with  the  intermitting  reed 
And  streams  that  murmur  of  the  mother  snow — 
Me  these  allure  and  know  me,  but  no  man, 
Knows,  and  my  goddess  only. 

In  the  Erechtheus  the  sentimental  touch  is  used  just  as  freely; 
Erechtheus  is  sentimental  in  his  attitude  to  Athens,  to  Praxithea, 
and  to  the  battle;  and  Praxithea  is  just  as  sentimental  in  her 
attitude  to  her  'mother-land,'  her  husband,  and  her  daughter. 

Sophistry.  Althaea  sounds  the  sophistic  note  in  her  very- 
first  speech,  where  she  challenges  the  attitude  of  the  chorus. 
During  the  episode  she  expounds  to  them  the  envy  of  the  gods, 
the  curse  of  love,  and  the  burden  of  life.  She  even  cites  the  source 
of  her  wisdom:  she  had  heard 

high  sayings  of  one  most  wise, 
Eurythemis  my  mother,  who  beheld 
With  eyes  alive  and  spake  with  lips  of  these 
As  one  on  earth  disfleshed  and  disaUied 
From  breath  or  blood  corruptible;  such  gifts 
Time  gave  her,  and  an  equal  soul  to  these 
And  equal  face  to  all  things;  thus  she  said. 

Although  the  chorus  maintains  through  the  first  episode 
its  own  attitude  to  the  gods,  the  effect  of  her  speech  is  seen  in  the 
next  song,  in  the  very  pessimistic  attitude  taken  to  man  and  his 
creation;  and  this  attitude  grows  more  and  more  sombre  as  the 
play  progresses.  Indeed  the  sophistication  of  the  chorus,  under 
Althaea's  influence  is  one  of  the  most  interesting  phenomena  in 
the  play.  Toward  the  close  of  the  play  we  find  them  speaking, 
like  nurses  trained  in  a  maternity  hospital,  of  gestation,  birth, 
and  the  nurture  of  children. 

the  son  lies  close  about  thine  heart. 
Full  of  thy  milk,  warm  from  thy  womb,  and  drains 
Life  and  the  blood  of  life  and  all  thy  fruit. 
Eats  thee  and  drinks  thee  as  who  breaks  bread  and  eats, 
Treads  wine  and  drinks,  thyself  a  sect  of  thee; 
And  if  he  feed  not,  shall  not  thy  flesh  faint? 
Or  drink  not,  are  not  thy  lips  dead  for  thirst? 
This  thing  moves  more  than  all  things,  even  thy  son, 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  17 

That  thou  cleave  to  him;  and  he  shall  honor  thee, 
Thy  womb  that  bare  him  and  the  breasts  he  knew, 
Reverencing  most  for  thy  sake  all  his  gods. 

The  king  too  assumes  the  air  of  wisdom  although  he  is  not 
given  opportunity  to  make  much  use  of  it.  Attracted  by  the 
argument  of  Althaea  and  her  son,  he  enters  with  the  remark: 

Lady,  the  daughter  of  Thestius,  and  thou,  son, 
Not  ignorant  of  your  strife  nor  light  of  wit. 
Scared  with  vain  dreams  and  fluttering  like  spent  fire, 
I  come  to  judge  between  you,  but  a  king 
Full  of  past  days  and  wise  from  years  endured. 

The  sophistry  of  Praxithea  is  perhaps  as  great  as  that  of 
Althaea,  but  it  lacks  the  parade,  so  is  not  so  noticeable. 

Rhetoric.  Rhetoric  of  the  declamatory  Euripidean  sort  is  to 
be  found  in  all  the  plays  of  Swinburne,  from  the  earliest  to  the 
latest;  it  is  not  peculiar  to  the  Greek  plays,  although  in  them 
it  has  no  small  place.  We  see  everywhere  the  tendency  of  the 
author  to  lose  control  of  the  theme  and  lapse  into  a  hysteria  of 
sentimentality.  It  is  not  confined  to  one  character,  but  is  char- 
acteristic of  all.  Althaea  is  the  greatest  sinner,  not  because  it  is 
more  characteristic  of  her,  but  because  she  has  greater  opportunity. 
Meleager,  in  his  last  speech,  is  superlatively  rhetorical  in  the  bad 
sense  of  the  term;  Atalanta,  in  her  justification  of  her  presence,  is 
equally  so;  while  Praxithea's  first  long  speech  to  Chthonia  is  a 
fine  example  of  a  rhesis  that  is  both  sophistic  and  rhetorical,  and 
steeped  in  sentimentality. 

Eros  Tyrannus.  Althaea  states  her  conception  of  love  in 
the  first  episode,  and  throughout  the  play  she  develops  the  theme 
with  many  modulations. 

but  I  know 
Foolish  and  wise  men  must  be  to  the  end, 
And  feed  myself  with  patience;  but  this  most, 
This  moves  me,  that  for  wise  men  as  for  fools 
Love  is  one  thing,  an  evil  thing,  and  turns 
Choice  words  and  wisdom  into  fire  and  air. 
And  in  the  end  shall  no  joy  come,  but  grief. 
Sharp  words  and  soul's  division  and  fresh  tears 
Flower  wise  upon  the  old  root  of  tears  brought  forth. 
Fruit-wise  upon  the  old  flower  of  tears  sprung  up. 
Pitiful  sighs  and  much  regrafted  pain. 


18        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

The  second  stasimon,  that  precedes  the  meeting  of  Meleager 
and  Atalanta,  treats  it  from  every  possible  phase.  For  Euripidean 
reminiscences  see  Hipp.  527  fif.,  764;  13;  Troades,  511-70,  799-860, 
1060-1120,  1272  fif.;  Helen,  1300  fif.  Althaea 
The  Supreme  Evil  decries  love  as  a  personal  evil,  while  the  chorus 
treats  it  as  an  evil  that  brings  about  the 
destruction  of  cities  and  the  overthrow  of  nations. 

We  Are  Against  Thee,  O  God  Most  High!  Atalanta, 
giving  stern  warning  to  those  who  oppose  her  participation  in 
the  hunt,  appeals  to  the  supreme  god  to  judge  between  them. 

for  now, 
If  there  be  any  highest  in  heaven,  a  god 
Above  all  thrones  and  thunders  of  the  gods 
Throned,  and  the  wheels  of  the  world  roll  under  him, 
Judge  he  between  me  and  all  of  you  and  see 
If  I  transgress  at  all;  but  ye,  refrain 
Transgressing  hands  and  reinless  mouths,  and  keep 
Silence,  lest  by  much  foam  of  violent  words 
And  proper  poison  of  your  lips  ye  die. 

This  motivates  not  only  the  chorus  that  follows  but  the  remainder 
of  the  play.  The  double  figure  used  by  Swinburne  has  two  aspects; 
one,  looking  to  the  hunt  with  its  deeds  of  prowess,  and  the  other, 
psychological,  showing  the  sinister  working  of  fate  within  the 
minds  of  all  who  tread  the  wretched  stage,  and  man's  uncon- 
sciousness of  the  power  that  waits  to  hurl  him  to  ruin.  Taking 
up  the  theme  of  the  Infatuate  Word,  the  chorus  proceeds  to  lash 
itself  into  a  very  ecstasy  of  fury  that  leads  straight  to  the  shambles 
of  Ate.  Woodberry  thinks  that  'the  thought  is  arrived  at  through 
the  spectacle  of  the  suffering  of  the  human  race,  and  applies,  as  it 
were,  to  the  Zeus  of  Prometheus.'  But  the  attitude  of  Prometheus, 
the  god,  to  his  brother  god  is  mild  when  compared  to  that  of  man 
to  his  sardonic  creator,  whom  he  pleases  to  characterize  as  The 
Supreme  Evil,  Prometheus  calls  nature  to  witness  his  woes; 
man  taunts  god  himself  for  the  ills  that  fall  to  mortal  lot.  Pro- 
metheus sees  the  end  of  his  suffering;  and  man  knows  that 

A  little  fruit  a  little  while  is  ours, 
And  the  worm  finds  it  soon, 

and  then  comes  death  and  much  forgetfulness  of  things. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  19 

Man  takes  delight  in  reviling  god  for  his  treatment  of  the 
thing  "fashioned  with  loathing  and  love,"  a  thing  that  is  clothed 
with  derision,  whose  life  is  a  watch  between  a  sleep  and  a  sleep. 
In  spite  of  the  Aeschylean  motivation,  that  suffering  will  follow 
transgressing  hands  and  reinless  mouths,  the  whole  outlook  of 
the  chorus  is  Euripidean. 

Thou  hast  laid 
Upon  us  with  thy  left  hand  life,  and  said 
Live:  and  again  thou  hast  said,  Yield  up  thy  breath, 
And  with  thy  right  hand  laid  upon  us  death.  (Cf.  Eur.  Med.  1109) 

Helen  blames  god  for  her  woes  (Troad.  1042ff.).  Apollo  is  the 
destroyer,  as  his  name  declares;  Fr.  781  0  fair  shining  Helios,  how 
hast  thou  destroyed  him  and  me  also;  rightly  among  mortals  art 
thou  called  Apollo.  Fr.  273,  "For  all  men,  and  not  for  us  alone, 
the  god  at  one  time  or  another  has  ruined  life."  For  various 
forms  of  the  same  idea  see  Hecuba,  197,  721;  Phoen.  1030;  Iph. 
Aul.  411;  Upon  high  and  low  alike  falls  their  ill-will.  Cf.  Helen, 
1213;  Orestes,  954,  Iph.  Aul.  536.  In  brief  the  whole  outlook  upon 
life  is  Euripidean:  death  is  promised  us.  but  not  before  sorrows 
and  tears  and  woes  and  mishaps  and  old  age.  We  all  carry  our 
burdens,  beneath  which  each  one  is  crushed.  (Alcestis  893.)  See 
Alcestis  20,  Hipp.  981,  Ion  381  £,  Troad,  1203. 

Swinburne  looks  forward  to  death  with  a  sort  of  eagerness, 
while  Euripides  is  fond  of  contemplating  the  many  misfortunes 
that  anticipate  it.     Cf.  fr.  264,  540,  558. 

Swinburne's  burden  of  age  is  also  Euripidean: 

Yea,  and  with  weariness  of  lips  and  eyes. 

With  breaking  of  the  bosom  and  with  sighs, 

We  labor,  and  are  clad  and  fed  with  grief 

And  filled  with  days  we  would  not  fain  behold 

And  nights  we  would  not  hear  of;  we  wax  old, 

All  we  wax  old  and  wither  like  a  leaf. 

We  are  outcast,  strayed  between  bright  sun  and  moon; 

Our  light  and  darkness  are  as  leaves  of  flowers, 

Black  flowers  and  white,  that  perish;  and  the  moon 

As  midnight,  and  the  night  as  daylight  hours. 

The  chorus  of  the  Heracles  gives  the  Euripidean  attitude  to  this 
condition  of  life.  Her.  107  ff.  Cf.  P.  Masqueray,  Euripide  et  ses 
Idees,  p.  272. 


20  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

What  disposition  we  are  to  make  of  the  tears  shed  on  our 
journey  to  this  bourne,  we  do  not  learn  from  either  poet,  although 
Swinburne  does  make  some  interesting  suggestions. 

What  shall  be  done  with  all  these  tears  of  ours? 
Shall  they  make  watersprings  in  the  fair  heaven 
To  bathe  the  brows  of  morning?     or  like  flowers 
\  Be  shed  and  shine  before  the  starriest  hours, 

Or  make  the  raiment  of  the  weeping  seven? 
Or  rather,  O  our  masters,  shall  they  be 
Food  for  the  famine  of  the  grievous  sea, 
A  great  well-head  of  lamentation 
Satiating  the  sad  gods?  or  fall  and  flow 
Among  the  years  and  seasons  to  and  fro 
And  wash  their  feet  with  tribulation 
And  fill  them  full  with  grieving  ere  they  go. 

Throughout  Euripides  they  trickle  just  as  freely  and  at  times 
with  as  much  ostentation. 

dcLKpva  r'eK  daKpwv  /v'araXeijSeTat 
ajxerkpOLai  dofjLOis' 

Swinburne's  high  gods  mix  our  drink  with  the  bubbling 
bitterness  of  life  and  death  and  hold  it  to  our  lips  and  laugh;  but 
they  taste  not,  lest  they  too  change  and  sleep.  They  mix  it, 
not  for  the  man  who  has  sinned,  as  in  Aeschylus,  nor  for  the  man 
marked  for  destruction,  as  in  Sophocles,  but  for  the  whole  human 
race.  Swinburne  takes  the  Euripidean  outlook;  god  confounds 
everything.  ~~~~~  ~ 

But  up  in  heaven  the  high  gods  one  by  one 

Lay  hands  upon  the  draught  that  quickeneth. 

Fulfilled  with  all  tears  shed  and  all  things  done, 

And  stir  with  soft  imperishable  breath 

The  bubbling  bitterness  of  life  and  death 

And  hold  it  to  our  lips  and  laugh;  but  they 

Preserve  their  lips  from  tasting  night  or  day, 

Lest  they  too  change  and  sleep,  the  fates  that  spun, 

The  lips  that  made  us  and  the  hands  that  slay. 

Lest  all  these  change  and  heaven  bow  down  to  none, 

Change  and  be  subject  to  the  secular  sway 

And  terrene  revolution  of  the  sun. 

Therefore  they  thrust  it  from  them,  putting  time  away. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES        21 

Euripides  cites  an  instance  and  adds  his  comment;  Hec.  952  fif. 
In  Orestes  the  chorus  cries  "Alas  for  the  deeds  of  the  malice  of 
heaven,"  and  in  the  Ion  Creusa  laments  the  'wrongful-reckless 
deeds  of  gods!  For  justice  where  shall  we  make  suit  if  it  is  our 
Lords'  injustice  that  crushes  us.  The  wish  to  reduce  the  gods 
to  man's  wretchedness  has  a  ring  of  Homeric  naivete,  but  we 
get  a  hint  of  it  in  Hipp.  1415,  where  in  reply  to  his  father's  admis- 
sion that  the  gods  have  caused  his  wits  to  stumble,  Hippolytus 
cries : 

O  that  men's  curses  could  but  strike  the  gods. 
(See  also  Bacchae,  1347.) 


A 


/ 


22        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

MIXED  INFLUENCE 

Characterization 

.  Double  Characteristics.  The  characters  of  Swinburne's 
/  Greek  plays  are  peculiar  in  this  respect;  in  action  and  in  the 
contemplation  of  action  they  are  Aeschylean,  while  in  retro- 
spection and  in  sentiment  they  are  strongly  Euripidean.  This 
is  particularly  true  of  Althaea,  his  greatest  Greek  creation. 

Althaea.  No  character  could  be  more  Aeschylean  than 
Althaea  when  she  uses  her  intelligence  to  direct  some  determina- 
tion of  will.  She  looks  forward  with  a  clearness  of  vision  and  a 
certainty  of  purpose  that  make  her  a  rival  of  the  great  Clytem- 
nestra.  She  is  surely  "One  of  those  Aeschylean  women,  a  mon- 
strous goddess,  who  had  in  her  tragic  and  Titanic  passion"  to 
the  highest  degree.  She  looks  backward,  however,  with  Euripi- 
dean tenderness  of  thought  that  too  often  degenerates  into 
Euripidean  sentimentality. 

The  Theme  of  the  Brand.  In  one  Aeschylean  aspect  we 
meet  her  on  the  title  page,  where  we  see 

What  the  child-destroying  cruel  Thestius'  child, 

Fire-taught  and  fire-incited,  brought  about, 

Rekindling  to  a  purple  glow  the  brand 

Coeval  with  her  own  child's  natal  cry; 

Matched  with  his  span  of  life  the  three  fates  spanned 

When  they  wrought  out  his  destiny  hard  by.  (Coeph  602  ff.) 

This  fire-motif  lights  the  steps  of  Althaea  from  the  prologue  to 
the  exodos.  Her  very  sleep  is  turned  into  a  fire  and  her  dreams 
to  stufif  that  kindles  it.  She  sees  that  Artemis,  in  sending  Atalanta 
to  join  the  hunt,  'hath  lit  Fire  where  the  old  fire  went  out;'  and 
she  complains  that  the  Fates 

Shed  fire  across  my  eyelids  mixed  with  night 
And  bum  me  blind  and  disiUuminate 
My  sense  of  seeing,  and  my  perspicuous  soul 
Darken  with  vision;  seeing,  I  see  not,  hear 
And  hearing  am  not  holpen,  but  mine  eyes 
Stain  many  tender  broideries  in  the  bed — 

and  my  brows  and  lips 
Tremble  and  sob  in  sleeping  like  swift  flames 
That  tremble,  or  water  when  it  sobs  with  heat 
Kindled  from  under.  » 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  23 

This  is  anxiety  such  as  Clytemnestra  feigned  to  have  felt  for 
her  husband  when  he  was  beset  by  the  dangers  around  Troy. 
(Cf.  Agam.  889  S.)  But  in  Althaea  there  is  no  hypocrisy,  her 
motive  is  as  perspicuous  as  her  soul,  and  her  vision  as  clear  as 
Cassandra's. 

Before  the  birth  of  Meleager  she  dreamed  that  she  bore  a  fire- 
brand. When  at  his  birth  one  of  the  fates  gave  him  life  till 
"the  brand  upon  the  hearth  burn  down,"  from  the  bed  she 

Sprang,  and  drew  forth  the  brand  and  cast  on  it 
Water,  and  trod  the  flame  barefoot,  and  crushed 
With  naked  hand  spark  beaten  out  of  spark 
And  blew  against  and  quenched  it; 

Later  she  dreamed  again  that  the  brand  burst  on  fire  and  faded, 
and  Death  came  and  with  dry  lips  blew  the  charred  ash  into  her 
breast,  while  Love  crushed  the  ember  beneath  his  feet.  In  speak- 
ing against  the  love  of  Meleager  for  Atalanta,  she  reminds  him 
that  with  time  blind  love  burns  out;  and  from  love's  light  and 
fiery  dreams  spring  heavy  sorrows.  In  her  fear  of  the  fate  of 
her  son  her  heart  takes  fire  and  trembles  flamewise  and  tears 
burn  her  eyes  fierce  as  fire.  She  sees  Meleager's  head  glitter 
and  his  hand  burn  its  way  through  the  furrow  of  sundering  spears. 
She  calls  attention  to  the  bitter  and  rooted  love  that  burns  between 
them.  The  very  sunlight  is  'the  frequent  flame  of  day.'  It  is,  of 
course,  natural  to  call  for  burnt-offering  when  she  learns  of  the 
death  of  the  boar;  but  immediately  after  the  sacrifice,  when  she  is 
informed  by  the  messenger  that  Meleager  has  slain  her  brothers, 
she  cries: 

Wast  thou  born  fire,  and  shalt  thou  not  devour? 
The  chorus  takes  up  the  theme: 

The  fire  thou  madest,  will  it  consume  even  thee? 

and  she  answers: 

My  dreams  are  fallen  upon  me;  burn  thou  too. 

She  imagines  her  sister  Leda  cursing  her  and  saying: 

A  sorrow  and  not  a  son, 
Sister,  thou  barest,  even  a  burning  fire, 
A  brand  consuming  thine  own  soul  and  me 


24        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

But  ye  now,  sons  of  Thestius,  make  good  cheer, 
For  ye  shall  have  such  wood  to  funeral  fire 
As  no  king  hath;  and  flame  that  once  burnt  down 
Oil  shall  not  quicken  or  breath  relume  or  wine 
Refresh  again; 

Had  her  brothers  died  a  natural  death  she  might  have 

Strewn  with  flowers  their  fire  and  on  their  tomb 
Hung  crowns  and  over  them  a  song,  and  seen 
Their  praise  outflame  their  ashes; 

Thereupon  she  resolves  that  they  shall  have  honor 

and  such  funereal  flame 
As  strews  men's  ashes  in  their  enemies'  face 
And  blinds  their  eyes  who  hate  them; 

Determined  to  avenge  her  brothers,  she  vows  that  her  eyes 

shall  see  never  nor  touch  anything 
Save  blood  unstaunched  and  fire  unquenchable. 

The  naivete  of  the  following  question  of  the  chorus  suggests  the 
question  that  the  Agamemnon  chorus  puts  to  Cassandra;  and  the 
vision  of  Althaea  is  strongly  reminiscent  of  the  vision  of  Cassandra. 
(Agam.  1215  ff.) 

What  wilt  thou  do?  what  ails  thee?  for  the  house 
Shakes  ruinously;  wilt  thou  bring  fire  for  it? 

She  replies 

Fire  in  the  roofs  and  on  the  lintels  fire. 

Lo  ye,  who  stand  and  weave,  between  the  doors, 

There;  and  blood  drips  from  hand  and  thread  and  stains 

Threshold  and  raiment  and  me  passing  in 

Flecked  with  the  sudden  sanguine  drops  of  death. 

And  later  she  cries, 

I  am  fire  and  burn  myself;  keep  clear  of  fire. 

After  she  has  kindled  the  brand,  she  burns  with  it; 

lo,  the  fire  I  lit, 
I  burn  with  fire  to  quench  it;  yea,  with  flame 
I  burn  up  even  the  dust  and  ash  thereof. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  25 

The  stichomachy  that  follows  reads  almost  like  a  conflagration. 

Ch.     Woman,  what  fire  is  this  thou  burnest  with? 

Al.      Yea,  to  the  bone,  yea,  to  the  blood  and  all. 

Ch.     For  this  thy  face  and  hair  are  as  one  fire. 

Al.      A  tongue  that  licks  and  beats  upon  the  dust. 

Ch.     And  in  thine  eyes  are  hollow  light  and  heat. 

Al.      Of  flame  not  fed  with  hand  or  frankincense. 

Ch.     I  see  a  faint  fire  lightening  from  the  hall. 

Al.      Gaze,  stretch  your  eyes,  strain  till  the  lids  drop  off. 

Ch,     Flushed  pillars  down  the  flickering  vestibule. 

And  a  long  brand  that  blackens;  and  white  dust." 

She  announces  the  death  of  Meleager  just  as  Clytemnestra 
announces  the  death  of  Agamemnon: 

That  is  my  son,  my  flesh,  my  fruit  of  life, 

My  travail  and  the  year's  weight  of  my  womb, 

Meleager,  a  fire  enldndled  of  mine  hands, 

And  of  mine  hands  extinguished;  this  is  he.  (Cf.  Agam.  1404.) 

ovTOS  eoTLV  ' A-y anefjLVWv  e^t6s 
TTOcrts,  v€Kp6s  8e,  rfjade  5e^tas  x^pos 
epyov,  diKaias  reKTOvos.  rad'  ud'  ex^L. 

She  prays  death  to  spare  her  until  she  sees  the  brand  burn  down 
and  die.     She  even  experiences  a  physical  sensation  of  burning. 

I  feel  the  fire  upon  my  face 
And  on  my  cheek  the  burning  of  a  brand. 
Yea,  the  smoke  bites  me,  yea,  I  drink  the  steam 
With  nostril  and  with  eyelid  and  with  lip 
Insatiate  and  intolerant;  and  mine  hands 
Burn,  and  the  fire  feeds  upon  mine  eyes;  I  reel 
As  one  made  drunk  with  living,  whence  he  draws 
Drunken  delight;  yet  I,  though  mad  for  joy. 
Loathe  my  long  living  and  am  waxen  red 
As  with  the  shadow  of  shed  blood;  behold, 
I  am  kindled  with  the  flames  that  fade  in  him, 
I  am  swollen  with  subsiding  of  his  veins, 
I  am  flooded  with  his  ebbing;  my  lit  eyes 
Flame  with  the  falling  fire  that  leaves  his  lids 
Bloodless;  my  cheek  is  luminous  with  blood 
Because  his  face  is  ashes; 


26        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

In  the  kommos  the  semichorus  takes  up  the  cry: 

He  wastes  as  the  embers  quicken, 
With  the  brand  he  fades  as  a  brand. 

and  with  nice  balance  of  phrase  the  chorus  sings  to  Meleager: 

Thou  madest  thy  sword  as  a  fiie, 
With  fire  for  a  sword  thou  art  slain. 

It  soon  becomes  a  part  of  Meleager's  cry: 

The  flesh  of  my  body  is  molten,  the  limbs  of  it  molten  like  lead. 

and 

My  heart  is  within  me 
As  an  ash  in  the  fire. 

Between  his  mother  and  Atalanta  he  draws  a  sharp  contrast: 

Though  thou  art  as  fire 
Fed  with  fuel  in  vain, 
My  delight,  my  desire 
Is  more  chaste  than  the  rain, 
More  pure  than  the  dewfall,  more  holy  than  stars  are 
that  live  without  stain. 

And  again  addressing  the  chorus: 

Will  ye  crown  me  my  tomb 

Or  exalt  me  my  name. 

Now  my  spirits  consume, 

Now  my  flesh  is  a  flame? 
who  answer: 

Turn  back  now,  turn  thee, 
As  who  turns  to  wake; 
Though  the  life  in  thee  burn  thee, 
Couldst  thou  bathe  it  and  slake 
Where  the  sea-ridge  of  Helle  hangs  heavier,  and  east  upon 
west  waters  break? 

In  his  last  speech,  while  addressing  his  mother  he  says: 

and  with  my  knees 
Would  worship,  but  thy  fire  and  subtlety, 
Dissundering  them,  devour  me;  for  these  limbs 
Are  as  light  dust  and  crumblings  from  mine  urn 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  27 

Before  the  fire  has  touched  them;  and  my  face 
As  a  dead  leaf  or  dead  foot's  mark  on  snow 

for  all  my  veins 

Fail  me,  and  all  mine  ashen  life  burns  down. 

I  would  thou  hadst  let  me  live;  but  gods  averse, 

But  fortune,  and  the  fiery  feet  of  change 

And  time,  these  would  not,  these  tread  out  my  life, 

These,  and  not  thou : 

Althaea  under  the  Spell  of  Ate.  From  this  we  see  at 
once  that  Althaea  is  an  abnormal  character,  that  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  play  she  is  under  the  spell  of  Ate,  already  made 
infatuate  by  the  powers  that  control  her  destiny.  She  hates 
Artemis  just  as  Prometheus  hates  Zeus,  and  for  a  reason  somewhat 
similar.  Artemis  has  long  afflicted  her  land,  and  has  now  thrown 
temptation  in  the  way  of  her  son.  So  she  felt  the  power  of  doom 
just  as  truly  as  Cassandra  felt  it  at  the  palace  of  Agamemnon;  and 
although  her  vision  was  not  so  clear,  her  premonition  led  her  to 
the  truth. 

Attitude  toward  the  Gods.  Her  faith  in  the  existence  of 
the  Gods  is  Aeschylean,  and,  although  she  does  not  display  the 
conventional  Greek  fear  of  them,  she  is  conventionally  reverent; 
she  praises  them  when  she  perceives  that  she  has  experienced  good 
at  their  hands.  But  on  such  occasions  the  audience  is  made 
aware  that  the  situation  is  one  of  dramatic  irony,  which  makes 
it  all  the  more  Aeschylean. 

Attitude  to  Son.  In  her  treatment  of  her  son  she  is,  like 
Clytemnestra,  "the  impersonation  of  tyrannic  self-will,  wronged 
and  angered  and  turned  to  vengeance.  She  was  the  keeper 
of  her  son's  life;  she  had  been  insolent  enough  to  extinguish  the 
brand  in  the  very  presence  of  the  fate  who  had  promised  him  life 
until  the  brand  was  consumed.  For  this  presumption  she  seems 
to  have  begun  early  to  show  signs  of  suffering  from  a  mind  diseased. 
Justly  proud  of  her  son,  she  could  not  but  feel  indignation  at  his 
attitude  to  Atalanta;  it  meant  ruin  from  the  start.  And,  although 
she  knew  that  her  brothers  and  her  son  were  none  too  friendly, 
she  was  utterly  overwhelmed  at  the  unnatural  crime  of  kindred 
slaughter.  Her  heart  was  hardened  like  Clytemnestra's  from 
brooding  over  the  fate  of  her  daughter.  Althaea  promised  her 
brethren  a  funeral  pyre  such  as  had  burnt  for  none  other;  she  was 
resolved  that  they  should  not  go  down  to  Hades  unattended.  She 


28  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

exults  in  her  deed  just  as  Clytemnestra  exults  to  the  chorus  of 
Agamemnon,  and  both  make  the  same  justification. 
Althaea  says 

and  these  my  son 

Not  reverencing  his  gods  nor  mine  own  heart 

Nor  the  old  sweet  years  for  old  venerable  things, 

But  cruel  and  in  his  raving  like  a  beast, 

Hath  taken  away  to  slay  them. 

In  the  same  manner  Clytemnestra  justifies  herself: 

He  (Agamemnon)  caring  no  more  for  her  death  than  for  the  death  of  a  beast  of  the 
field,  though  he  had  sheep  in  abundance  in  his  fleecy  flocks,  sacrificed  his  own 
child  to  charm  away  the  Thracian  winds.     Agam.  1415  ff. 

Althaea  feared  that  her  mother  Eurythemis  might  grieve, 
hearing  how  her  sons  came  down  to  her  in  the  dark, 

Unburied,  unavenged,  as  kinless  men 
And  had  a  queen  their  sister. 

It  is  with  somewhat  of  a  spirit  of  family  pride  that  she  justifies  her 
deed.     The  bitter  irony  of  Clytemnestra  is  far  more  terrible. 

The  victim  has  no  need  of  the  wailings  of  the  people  of  the  house;  but  Iphigenia, 
his  child,  lovingly,  as  is  meet,  shall  welcome  her  father  at  the  ford  of  the  swift- 
flowing  Acheron,  and  put  her  arms  about  him  and  kiss  him.     (Ag.  1555  fi'.) 

Althaea  and  Atalanta.  Althaea's  hatred  of  Atalanta  is 
more  genuine  than  Clytemnestra's  for  Cassandra,  and  is  due, 
partly  to  the  jealousy  of  a  mother  who  has  always  dominated  the 
heart  of  her  son,  and  partly  to  her  terror  of  the  strange  woman, 
so  different  from  herself  and  the  woman  she  would  choose  for  her 
son's  bride.  This  is  apparent  in  spite  of  her  stern  tone  in  the 
sermon  on  the  law.  Clytemnestra's  feeling  is  more  of  contempt  or 
disgust;  she  has  no  fear  of  a  slave  brought  home  from  a  conquered 
city.  She  sneers  at  the  corpse  of  her  husband  as  the  darling  of 
many  a  Chryseis.  The  swan-song  of  one  of  these  is  as  a  relish 
to  her  own  love.  To  both  herself  and  Agamemnon  such  things 
had  long  ago  become  ol'd  xep  vofxl^eraLs. 

Atalanta  was  a  woman  armed,  the  wholly  unusual. 

A  woman  armed  makes  war  upon  herself, 
Unwomanlike,  and  treads  down  use  and  wont 
And  the  sweet  common  honor  that  she  hath, 
Love,  and  the  cry  of  children,  and  the  hand 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  29 

Trothplight  and  mutual  mouth  of  marriages. 
This  doth  she  being  unloved;  whom  if  one  love, 
Not  fire  nor  iron  and  the  wide-mouthed  wars 
Are  deadher  than  her  lips  or  braiden  hair. 
For  of  the  one  comes  poison,  and  a  curse 
Falls  from  the  other  and  burns  the  lives  of  men. 

Althaea  and  Oeneus.  Oeneus  enters  at  the  close  of  Melea- 
ger's  reply  to  his  mother's  sermon  on  the  Law,  and  attempts 
to  assume  a  dignity  and  port  in  keeping  with  his  political  rank 
and  his  hypothetical  importance  in  his  household.  His  air  is 
that  of  a  judge  come  to  decide  between  mother  and  son;  he  implies 
that  one  is  light  of  wit,  and  the  other  is  "scared  with  vain  dreams 
and  fluttering  like  spent  fire."  One  he  reproves  for  being  fain 
to  undo  things  done;  the  other  for  being  swift  to  esteem  them 
overmuch.    His  own  assurance  rests  on  the  fact  that  he  is 

a  king 
Full  of  past  days,  and  wise  from  years  endured. 

He  feels  kindly  towards  Atalanta  because  of  her  beauty  and  her 
modesty;  and  he  philosophizes  on  the  changes  wrought  by  time 
that  now  brings 

Among  men  armed  a  woman,  foreign  born, 
A  virgin,  not  like  the  natural  flower  of  things 
Unloveable,  no  light  for  a  husband's  house. 
Espoused;  a  glory  among  unwedded  girls, 
And  chosen  of  gods  who  reverence  maidenhood. 

Still  he  is  willing  to  accept  whatever  help  such  a  maiden  may 
contribute  to  the  slaying  of  the  boar.  He  honors  her,  and  in  doing 
so  honors  the  gods  whom  she  follows.  But  as  for  his  son  the 
obligation  is  clear; 

but  thou 
Abstain  thy  feet  from  following  and  thine  eyes 
From  amorous  touch,  nor  set  towards  hers  thine  heart. 
Son,  lest  hate  bear  no  deadher  fruit  than  love. 

Thereupon  Althaea  addresses  Oeneus  for  the  first  and  last 
time  in  the  play,  and  in  a  manner  that  bespeaks  a  tolerant  con- 
tempt. She  is  weary  of  wise  words.  "O  king,  thou  art  wise, 
but  wisdom  halts;"  One  might  imagine  Clytemnestra  dismissing 
Agamemnon  in  just  this  manner,  had  she  not  decided  to  slay  him. 


30        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

EuRiPiDE AN  Influence.  The  Gods  .  Althaea  accepts  the 
gods  with  Aeschylean  faith  and  curses  them  with  Euripidean 
audacity..  She  was  herself  sprung  from  the  gods;  their  blood 
was  in  her  veins,  their  passions  in  her  heart.  Even  her  judgment 
is  not  that  of  a  mortal,  but  rather  of  a  temper  of  the  race  divine. 
Her  knowledge  of  their  will  and  temper  enables  her  to  assume 
towards  them  a  very  definite  attitude,  which  she  maintains  to 
the  end  of  the  play.  She  suffers  from  no  illusions,  for  she  is  well 
aware  of  the  hopelessness  of  human  destiny;  she  is  not  deceived 
by  the  solicitude  of  the  fates  in  the  welfare  of  her  new-born  babe, 
knowing  that  'they  mock  us  with  a  little  piteousness,  and  spare 
us  but  to  smite.'  She  speaks  at  times  more  as  the  equal  of  the 
gods  than  as  a  mortal;  she  is  often  wanting  in  reverence,  while  on 
occasion  she  is  really  impious.  Her  irreverence  is  due,  in  part, 
to  her  resentment  at  the  unkind  treatment  experienced  at  the 
hands  of  Artemis;  but  it  arises,  in  greater  measure,  from  a  deep- 
seated  bitterness  against  the  gods, — from  her  certain  knowledge 
that  they  use  their  power  to  the  hurt  of  mortals,  whenever  the 
inclination  comes  upon  them.  Man's  sad  plight  is  deep-set  in 
her  mind;  she  regards  him  with  a  sort  of  Promethean  pity,  although 
this  pity  is  not  ennobled  by  any  yearning  to  do  him  service. 
She  is  too  well  aware  of  the  hopelessness  of  such  an  idea.  Sharp 
upon  the  last  note  of  the  chorus  strikes  the  discord  of  her  question: 

What  are  ye  singing,  what  is  this  ye  sing? 

The  maidens  reply  that  they  are  bringing  flowers  and  song  and 
raiment  to  propitiate  the  goddess.  To  this  her  reply  is  a  theme 
that  she  amplifies  and  modulates  and  develops  with  variation 
upon  variation;  but  in  the  end  it  is  substantially  the  same. 

Night,  a  black  hound,  follows  the  white  fawn  day, 
Swifter  than  dreams  the  white  flown  feet  of  sleep; 
Will  ye  pray  back  the  night  with  any  prayers? 
And  though  the  spring  put  back  a  little  while 
Winter,  and  snows  that  plague  all  men  for  sin, 
And  the  iron  time  of  cursing,  yet  I  know 
Spring  shall  be  ruined  with  the  rain,  and  storm 
Eat  up  like  fire  the  ashen  autumn  days. 

The  chorus  suggests  that  "One  doth  well,  being  patient  of  the 
gods,"   (cf.  Eurip.   Hel.   252)  at  which    Althaea    demurs;    'their 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  31 

healing  herbs  infect  our  blood,  they  give  us  poisonous  drink  for 
wine  and  gall  for  milk  and  cursing  for  a  prayer. 

There  is  nothing  stabile  in  the  world 
But  the  gods  break  it. 

Smitten  in  the  death  of  her  brothers  and  realizing  that  she 
is  now  in  the  presence  of  her  old  nameless  dread,  she  cries: 
Our  time  is  come  upon  us,  it  is  here. 
The  gods  are  many  about  me,  I  am  one, 
They  rend  me,  they  divdde  me,  they  destroy. 
They  are  strong,  they  are  strong,  I  am  broken  and 
they  prevail 

She  accuses  the  gods  of  wanton  malevolence. 

We all  our  days 

Sin  and  have  hunger  and  die  infatuated. 
For  madness  have  ye  given  us  and  not  health, 
And  sins  whereof  we  know  not;  and  for  these 
Death  and  sudden  destruction  unawares. 

As  her  grief  grows  more  intense  her  audacity  incites  her  to  claim 
a  place  with  them,  just  as  wanton,  just  as  inconsistent: 

My  breath  drawn 

Shames  me  and  monstrous  things  and  violent  gods. 

What  strange  things  eaten  or  drunken,  O  great  gods, 

Make  me  as  you,  or  as  the  beasts  that  feed, 

Slay  and  divide  and  cherish  their  own  hearts? 

Then  she  reaches  the  culmination  of  audacity  in 

ye  strong  gods. 
Give  place  unto  me;  I  am  as  one  of  you 
To  give  life  and  to  take  life. 

After  she  has  kindled  the  brand  she  laughs,  'as  the  gods  laugh  at 
us';  she  has  no  prayer  to  offer. 

I  that  did  this  will  weep  not  nor  cry  out. 

Cry  ye  and  weep;  I  will  not  call  on  gods. 

Call  ye  on  them. 

She  has  maintained  to  the  bitter  end  the  attitude  of  self-sufficiency 
that  she  took  at  the  close  of  the  first  episode: 

Whatever  intolerable  or  glad 

The  swift  hours  weave  or  unweave,  I  go  hence 

Full  of  mine  own  soul,  perfect  of  myself, 

Toward  mine  and  me  sufficient. 


32        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

This  bitterness  against  the  gods  is  perhaps  temperamental 
in  part, — they  have  infected  her  blood, — but  it  is  in  great  measure 
due  to  her  Euripidean  contemplation  of  the  phenomena  of  life. 
She  certainly  has  a  definite  complaint  against  Artemis,  in  the 
utterance  of  which  she  throws  discretion  to  the  winds. 

First  Artemis  for  all  this  harried  land 

I  praise  not,  and  for  wasting  of  the  boar 

That  mars  with  tooth  and  tusk  and  fiery  feet 

Green  pasturage  and  the  grace  of  standing  corn, 

And  meadow  and  marsh  with  springs  and  unblown  leaves, 

Flocks  and  swift  herds  and  all  that  bite  sweet  grass, 

I  praise  her  not;  what  things  are  these  to  praise? 

Both  the  speaker  of  the  prologue  and  the  chorus  justify  the 
sending  of  the  boar.  The  former,  in  his  invocation  to  Artemis, 
acknowledges  that  it  was 

Sent  in  thine  anger  against  us  for  sin  done. 
And  bloodless  altars  without  wine  or  fire. 

The  chorus  gives  a  more  definite  explanation: 

But  when  the  king  did  sacrifice  and  gave 
Each  god  fair  dues  of  wheat  and  blood  and  vvdne. 
Her  not  with  bloodshed  and  burnt-offering 
Revered  he,  nor  with  salt  and  cloven  cake; 
Wherefore,  being  wroth,  she  plagued  the  land. 

Unconvinced  by  this  explanation,  or  at  least  ignoring  it, 
Althaea  at  once  makes  a  second  complaint.  She  has  learned  of 
the  coming  of  'Arcadian  Atalanta,  snowy-souled,'  and  in  this 
sees  again  the  malevolence  of  Artemis. 

Yea,  but  a  curse  she  hath  sent  above  all  this 
To  hurt  us  where  she  healed  us,  and  hath  lit 
Fire  where  the  old  fire  went  out. 

Love  is  coming,  "a.  thwart  sea-wind  full  of  rain  and  foam."     From 
it  there  is  no  escape;  its  universality  strikes  her  at  the  heart. 

But  this  most. 
This  moves  me,  that  for  wise  men  as  for  fools, 
Love  is  one  thing,  an  evil  thing,  and  turns 
Choice  words  and  wisdom  into  fire  and  air. 

Cf.  Euripides,  Medea,  330, 

Alas,  to  mortals  what  a  curse  is  love. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES        33 

But  against  the  irresistible  she  will  do  what  she  can;  she  will  go 
arm  her  son,  'lest  love  or  some  man's  anger  work  him  harm.' 

Ceremonial.  In  matters  of  ceremony  Althaea  displayed 
the  conventional  reverence  for  the  gods,  and  expressed  her  obliga- 
tion for  their  kindness.  Her  first  cry,  when  she  learns  of  the 
death  of  the  boar,  is 

some  bring  flowers  and  crown 
These  gods  and  all  the  lintel  and  shed  wine, 
Fetch  sacrifice  and  slay,  for  heaven  is  good. 

With  a  sense  of  well-being  she  can  feel  kindly  toward  them, 
although  she  has  just  expressed  strong  disapproval  of  Artemis 
for  harrying  the  land.  After  the  narrative  of  the  herald,  wherein 
Meleager  appears  in  such  a  heroic  role,  she  cries  again, 

Laud  ye  the  gods,  for  this  they  have  given  is  good. 
She  adds,  however,  with  Euripidean  misgiving. 

And  what  shall  be,  they  hide  until  their  time. 

Some  have  perished  in  the  hunt,  but  that  was  to  be  expected. 

But  let  all  sad  things  be, 
Till  all  harve  made  before  the  prosperous  gods 
Burnt  offering,  and  pour  out  the  floral  wine. 
Look  fair,  O  gods,  and  favorable,  for  we 
Praise  you  with  no  false  heart  and  flattering  mouth 
Being  merciful,  but  with  pure  souls  and  prayer. 

This,  of  course,  is  merely  ritualistic;  under  the  circumstances 
it  is  what  is  expected  of  her.  The  herald,  however,  is  properly 
impressed,  for  he  replies: 

Thou  hast  prayed  well;  for  whoso  fears  not  these. 
But  once  being  prosperous,  waxes  huge  of  heart, 
Him  shall  some  new  thing  unaware  destroy, 

a  characteristic  Aeschylean  idea  stated  with  Aeschylean  irony. 

POTHOS.  Althaea  is  distinctly  Euripidean  in  her  ability  to 
change  suddenly  from  a  stern  fierce  mood  to  one  of  yearning  and 
tender  reminiscence.  This  is  revealed  in  her  attitude  to  her  son, 
her  brothers,  her  absent  relatives  and  her  dead  mother.  In  the 
rhesis  of  the  first  episode,  after  her  condemnation  of  love  and  her 
arraignment  of  the  gods,  she  becomes  reminiscent  of  her  new-born 
babe  and  the  presence  of  the  Fates  at  his  birth. 


34  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

For  I  said, 
These  are  the  most  high  Fates  that  dwell  with  us, 
And  we  find  favor  a  little  in  their  sight, 
A  little,  and  more  we  miss  of,  and  much  time 
Foils  us;  howbeit  they  have  pitied  me,  O  son, 
And  thee  most  piteous,  thee  a  tenderer  thing 
Than  any  flower  of  fleshly  seed  alive. 
Wherefore  I  kissed  and  hid  him  with  my  hands, 
And  covered  under  arms  arid  hair  and  wept. 
And  feared  to  touch  him  with  my  tears  and  laughed; 

In  her  pride  of  her  son's  prowess  she  sees  him 

Always  also  a  flower  of  three  suns  old. 
The  small  one  thing  that  lying  drew  down  my  life 
To  lie  with  thee  and  feed  thee;  a  child  and  weak. 
Mine,  a  delight  to  no  man,  sweet  to  me. 

After  she  has  kindled  the  brand,  her  mind  reverts  once  more 
to  the  childhood  of  her  son: 

Yet  O  child, 
Son,  first-born,  fairest — O  sweet  mouth,  sweet  eyes, 
That  drew  my  life  out  through  my  suckling  breast. 
That  shone  and  clove  my  heart  through — O  soft  knees 
Clinging,  O  tender  treadings  of  soft  feet, 
Cheeks  warm  with  little  kissings,  O  child,  child, 
What  have  we  made  each  other?     Lo,  I  felt 
Thy  weight  cleave  to  me,  a  burden  of  beauty,  O  son, 
Thy  cradled  brows  and  loveliest  loving  lips. 
The  floral  hair,  the  little  lightening  eyes. 
And  all  thy  goodly  glory;  with  mine  hands 
Delicately  I  fed  thee,  with  my  tongue 
Tenderly  spake,  sa>ang.  Verily  in  god's  time, 
For  all  the  little  likeness  of  thy  limbs. 
Son,  I  shall  make  thee  a  kingly  man  to  fight, 
A  lordly  leader;  and  hear  before  I  die. 
She  bore  the  goodliest  sword  of  all  the  world. 

After  comparing  him  with  the  great  Tydeus  (Aesch.  Sept.  380- 
395),  she  reverts  to  his  infancy: 

Yet  was  he  then  but  a  span  long,  and  moaned 
With  inarticulate  mouth  inseparate  words, 
And  with  blind  lips  and  fingers  wrung  my  breast 
Hard,  and  thrust  out  with  foolish  hands  and  feet, 
Murmuring. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES        35 

and  later, 

But  fair  for  me  thou  wert,  O  little  life, 
Fruitless,  the  fruit  of  mine  own  flesh,  and  blind, 
More  than  much  gold,  ungrown,  a  foolish  flower. 
For  silver  nor  bright  snow  nor  feather  of  foam 
Was  whiter,  and  no  gold  was  yellower  than  thine  hair, 
O  child,  my  child. 

In  her  terrible  anguish  of  soul,  when  contemplating  her 
brothers'  fate,  her  mind  reverts  again  to  the  days  of  their  child- 
hood, when  they  sported  with  her  and  made  her  familiar  with 
armor  and  hounds  and  hunting  spears.     And  between  them  comes 

the  love  of  my  born  son, 
A  new-made  mother's  new-born  love,  that  grows 
From  the  soft  child  to  the  strong  man,  now  soft, 
Now  strong  as  either,  and  still  one  sole  same  love, 
Strives  with  me,  no  light  thing  to  strive  withal. 

Such  passages  are  numerous  in  Euripides.  (Cf.  Tro.  740  ff.) 

O  darling  child,  O  prized  above  all  price. 

Thou  must  leave  thy  poor  mother,  die  by  foes.  *  *  * 

Child,  dost  thou  weep,  dost  comprehend  thy  doom? 

Why  with  thy  hands  clutch,  clinging  to  my  robe. 

Like  fledgling  fleeing  to  nestle  'neath  my  wings?  *  *  * 

O  tender  nursling,  sweet  to  mother,  sweet! 

O  balmy  breath!  in  vain  and  all  in  vain 

This  breast  in  swaddling-band  has  nurtured  thee. 

Vainly  I  travailed  and  was  spent  with  toils! 

Now,  and  no  more  forever,  kiss  thy  mother. 

Fling  thee  on  her  that  bare  thee,  twine  thine  arms 

Around  my  waist  and  lay  thy  lips  to  mine. 

Hecuba  laments  that  the  child  had  not  died  in  battle.  Althaea 
makes  the  same  lament  for  her  brothers,  and  Oeneus  for  Meleager. 
(Eurip.  Tro.  1167  ff.) 

Ah,  darling,  what  ill  death  has  come  on  thee! 

Hadst  thou  for  Troy  been  slain,  when  thou  hadst  known 

Youth,  wedlock's  bliss,  and  godlike  sovereignty. 

Blest  wert  thou — if  herein  may  aught  be  blest; 

But  now,  once  seen  and  sipped  by  thy  child-soul, 

Thine  home-bliss  fleets  forgotten,  unenjoyed. 

Poor  child,  how  sadly  thine  ancestral  halls 

Upreared  by  Loxias,  from  thine  head  have  shorn 

The  curls  that  oft  thy  mother  softly  smoothed 


36        THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

And  kissed,  wherefrom  through  shattered  bones  forth  grins 
Murder — a  ghastliness  I  cannot  speak. 

Medea,  about  to  slay  her  children,  speaks  in  a  similar  strain: 

Give,  O  babes. 
Give  to  your  mother  the  right  hand  to  kiss. 
O  dearest  hand,  O  lips  most  dear  to  me, 
O  form  and  noble  features  of  my  children. 
Blessing  be  on  you,  there!  for  all  things  here 
Your  sire  hath  stolen.     Sweet,  O  sweet  embrace, 
O  children's  roseleaf  skin,  O  balmy  breath. 
Away,  away;  strength  faileth  me  to  gaze 
On  you,  but  I  am  overcome  of  evil. 

It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  examples;  these  are  sufficient  to 
show  the  mental  attitude  of  the  two  poets.  For  an  Aeschylean 
example  see  Choephoroe,  755  ff. 

Althaea  the  Preacher.  Althaea  was  so  sure  of  her  sophistry 
that  she  treated  as  her  mental  inferiors  all  who  came  in  contact 
with  her.  Her  thought  dominated  the  play  from  the  time  she 
appeared  in  the  first  episode  until,  towards  the  close  of  the  exodos, 
she  vowed  never  to  open  her  lips  again.  The  woman  who  could 
be  so  tender  in  thoughts  of  her  son  and  brothers  and  absent 
relatives  was  always  severe  in  conversation  with  them,  giving  them 
advice  that  closed  with  a  gnomic  utterance  which  veiled  a  threat, 
and  at  times  addressing  them  in  the  language  of  a  veritable 
martinet.  Sometimes  for  their  enlightenment  she  made  use  of 
the  long  rhesis  developed  in  rhetorical  style.  We  sometimes 
find  a  theme,  with  elaboration,  illustration,  application,  and 
conclusion  with  threat  openly  expressed  or  concealed.  The  first 
of  these  occurs  at  the  close  of  the  first  episode  and  is  directed  at 
the  chorus,  although  it  applies  to  her  son.  Its  theme  is  Love 
the  Tyrant.  (Cf.  Eur.  Hip.  536  fif.)  Her  second  is  addressed  to 
her  son  and  is  based  on  the  same  theme,  although  for  an  intro- 
duction she  discourses  on  The  Law,  and  incidentally  uses  reminis- 
cences from  Aeschylus  and  Sophocles,  finally  arriving  at  her  point 
of  attack,  a  woman  armed.  Of  her  beware;  'her  lips  are  deadlier 
than  fire  or  iron  or  the  wide-mouthed  wars.'  The  theme  of  the 
third  is  Piety,  the  majesty  of  kindred  blood  (Ata  avvmiJLOv)  and  is 
addressed  to  the  chorus,  but  serves  in  effect  as  the  funeral  oration 
over  her  slain  brothers. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  37 

Attitude  toward  Atalanta.  Although  Althaea  regarded 
Atalanta  with  jealousy  and  hate,  she  nevertheless  gave  indication 
of  a  certain  amount  of  fear.  She  recognized  her  significance  from 
the  very  beginning.  She  saw  in  her  the  curse  sent  by  Artemis 
for  the  overthrow  of  Meleager, — a  curse  that  was  just  as  effective 
as  Phaedra  for  the  ruin  of  Hippolytus.  Although  she  is  violent 
in  her  denunciation,  her  tongue  is  curbed  to  a  degree  by  the  very 
reverent  attitude  taken  by  the  chorus,  the  king,  and  by  Meleager. 
Her  brothers  are  of  her  opinion,  but  all  three  are  cowed  by  the 
close  of  Atalanta's  speech  in  justification  of  her  joining  the  hunt. 
The  speaker  of  the  prologue  refers  to  her  as 
The  maiden  rose  of  all  thy  maids, 

Arcadian  Atalanta,  snowy-souled. 

Fair  as  the  snow  and  footed  as  the  wind. 

To  the  chorus 

She  is  holier  than  all  holy  days  or  things, 

The  sprinkled  water  or  fume  of  perfect  fire; 

Chaste,  dedicated  to  pure  prayers  and  filled 

With  higher  thoughts  than  heaven;  a  maiden  clean. 

Pure  iron,  fashioned  for  a  sword,  and  man 

She  loves  not;  what  should  one  such  do  with  love? 

To  the  king  she  is 

a  glory  among  unwedded  girls, 
And  chosen  of  gods  who  reverence  maidenhood. 

To  Meleager  she  is 

Most  fair  and  fearful,  feminine,  a  god. 
Faultless;  whom  I  that  love  not,  being  unlike, 
Fear  and  give  honor  and  choose  from  all  the  gods. 

While  to  Althaea  she  is 

the  strange  woman,  she,  the  flower,  the  sword, 
Red  from  spilt  blood,  a  mortal  flower  to  men. 
Adorable,  detestable, 

So  it  seems  that  Swinburne,  consciously  or  unconsciously, 
has  made  Atalanta  the  hypostasis  of  Artemis.  She  is  certainly 
more  than  a  mortal  maid  who  haunted  the  wilds  and  followed 
the  lead  of  the  Daughter  of  Leto.  Her  divinity  is  recognized  by 
the  chorus,  by  Meleager,  by  Oeneus,  the  chief  huntsman,  by  all 
save  the  brothers  of  Althaea,  who  paid  the  price  of  their  irrever- 
ence; even  by  Althaea  herself,  who  saw  in  her  the  power  come  to 


38  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

break  her  life.  It  was  she  who  filled  Althaea's  mind  with  the  fire 
that  kindled  the  fatal  brand;  who  caused  her  to  rail  one  moment  at 
Love,  the  evil  thing,  and  the  next  to  weep  over  fond  memories  of 
her  child.  And  Althaea,  in  lamenting  the  death  of  her  brothers, 
is  correct  in  her  surmise  of  the  cause,  She  has  divined  the  real 
intention  of  the  Fates;  the  instrument  chosen  to  realize  that 
intention  was  Atalanta.  Her  appearance  and  her  psychological 
effect  suggested  divinity  as  the  Greeks  realized  it.  Meleager  was 
too  deeply  impressed  with  her  sanctity  to  give  any  hint  of  the  love 
that  had  overcome  him.  In  just  such  a  manner  Hippolytus 
chose  to  follow  Artemis,  scorning  the  cult  of  Aphrodite.  Both 
wished  to  be  'linked  with  companionship  too  high  for  man,'  and 
both  fell  before  the  "blast  of  the  envy  of  god."  It  is  not  sur- 
prising, therefore,  that  Althaea  did  what  she  could  to  rescue  her 
son  from  the  curse  that  was  about  to  fall  upon  him,  and  from 
which  she  felt  in  her  inmost  heart  that  there  was  no  escape.  Her 
struggle  against  Love  is  but  the  prelude  of  that  greater  struggle, 
so  like  Medea's,  against  the  doing  of  a  deed  that  Fate  refuses  to 
leave  undone. 

Meleager.  Meleager  is  Hippolytus  writ  large.  He  displays 
all  the  virtues  of  the  pure-hearted  hunter  of  Euripides  without 
any  of  his  pettiness.  He  is,  of  course,  a  much  greater  man,  a 
winner  of  battles  at  home  and  abroad;  but  he  meets  the  same 
sinister  fate  in  the  hour  of  his  triumph  at  the  hands  of  inscrutable 
powers  and  for  reasons  hard  to  explain.  Throughout  the  play  he 
is  the  blameless  knight,  patient  alike  under  the  sermons  of  his 
mother,  the  vindictiveness  of  his  uncles,  the  condescension  of  his 
father,  and  the  disregard  of  Atalanta.  Against  the  latter  he  is 
warned  by  mother,  father,  uncles,  and  chorus;  they  all  assume 
that  he  loves  the  votary  of  Artemis,  although  his  statement  to 
his  mother  makes  clear  his  own  attitude:  in  his  wanderings  in  the 
Colchian  land  he  saw  many  strange  things,  but 

I  saw  not  one  thing  like  this  one  seen  here, 
Most  fair  and  fearful,  feminine,  a  god, 
Faultless;  whom  I  that  love  not,  being  unlike, 
Fear  and  give  honor  and  choose  from  all  the  gods. 

He  regards  her  from  the  first  as  Hippolytus  regards  Artemis,  and 
the  parallel  holds  to  the  end.  We  find  Aphrodite  plotting  the 
death  of  Hippolytus  because  he  honored  Artemis. 


But 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  39 

Theseus'  son,  born  of  the  Amazon, 

Hippolytus,  pure-hearted  Pittheus'  ward, 

Sole  mid  the  folk  of  this  Troezenian  land 

Sayeth  that  vilest  of  the  gods  am  I ; 

Rejects  the  couch;  of  marriage  will  he  none, 

But  honors  Phoebus'  sister  Artemis, 

Zeus's  chUd,  and  counts  her  greatest  of  the  gods. 

He  knows  not  Hades  gates  wide-flung  for  him, 

And  this  day's  light  the  last  his  eyes  shall  see.  ' 


She  feels  nemesis  because  Hippolytus 

Through  the  green  wood  in  the  maid's  train  stUl 

With  swift  hounds  sweeps  the  wild  beasts  from  the  earth, 

Linked  with  companionship  too  high  for  man. 

Such  is  the  plight  of  Meleager;  Artemis,  in  the  guise  of  Atalanta, 
has  come  to  destroy  him  as  the  price  of  the  boar.  On  this  subject 
Cornford,  Thucydides  Mythistoricus,  p.  253,  has  an  interesting 
paragraph.  "The  notion  that  a  passion  like  Eros  can  be  the 
instrument  of  the  divine  jealousy  finds  an  interesting  expression 
on  a  vase  of  the  same  class  as  the  Darius  krater  figured  on  p.  195. 
In  the  central  field  the  death  of  Meleager  is  represented  inside  a 
house.  Outside,  and  on  a  higher  level,  sits  Aphrodite,  with  her 
head  inclined  in  sorrow,  watching  the  scene.  In  her  left  hand  she 
holds  a  bow  and  arrow;  and  beside  her  stands  Eros.  He  is  unmis- 
takable, but  the  name  inscribed  above  him  is  not  his  own,  but 
Phthonos.  The  significance  is  clear;  Aphrodite  symbolizes  the 
love  of  Meleager  for  Atalanta,  of  which  she  is  the  supernatural 
cause,  the  paraitia;  Eros-Phthonos  is  the  enhanced  passion  which 
led  Meleager  to  overstep  the  bounds  assigned  to  man,  and  brought 
on  the  doom  by  which  the  jealousy  of  heaven  is  appeased." 

Both  heroes  fall  because  of  an  act  of  justice.  Meleager  slays 
his  uncles  for  their  treatment  of  Atalanta,  and  so  brings  about 
his  own  destruction;  while  Hippolytus  is  overthrown  by  the  plot 
of  Aphrodite,  because  he  had  scorned  the  love  of  Phaedra. 

The  kommos  describing  the  death  of  Meleager  is  one  of  the 
greatest  in  literature.  Its  structure  Way  has  imitated  in  several 
places  in  his  Translation  of  Euripides,  to  show  only  too  clearly 
how  great  was  the  virtuosity  of  Swinburne.  All  words  of  comment 
are  inadequate;  surely  Swinburne  was  right  in  this  instance,  when 


40  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

he  said  that  it  was  the  business  of  the  reader  to  rejoice  in  the  song 
that  is  sung  for  him  and  praise  the  gift  of  the  singer.  As  for  the 
song,  it  is  not  his  to  handle.  With  this  in  mind,  I  shall  try  to 
observe  due  reverence  for  this  great  death  symphony,  although 
material  for  comparison  is  abundant. 

Meleager,  while  crowning  Atalanta,  is  stricken  with  sudden 
agony  from  the  kindling  of  the  brand, 

and  grasping  his  own  hair  groaned 
And  cast  his  raiment  round  his  face  and  fell. 

His  father  Oeneus  leapt  down 

And  caught  him,  crying  out  twice,  O  child;  and  thrice, 
So  that  men's  eyelids  thickened  with  their  tears, 

just  as  in  the  Medea,  Creon,  entering  the  palace,  falls  over  the 
corpse  of  his  daughter 

And  straightway  wailed  and  clasped  the  body  round, 
And  kissed  it,  crying,  0  my  hapless  child, 
What  god  thus  horribly  hath  thee  destroyed? 

Both  dying  men  are  brought  home  to  the  sound  of  mourning. 
Euripides'  chorus  draws  a  very  sympathetic  picture: 

Lo,  lo,  the  stricken  one  borne 
Hitherward  with  his  young  flesh  torn 
And  his  golden  head  of  its  glory  shorn. 
Ah  griefs  of  the  house,  what  doom 
Twofold  on  thine  halls  hath  come 
By  the  gods'  will  shrouded  in  sorrow's  gloom. 

No  translator  could  make  Euripides  approach  the  splendor 
of  the  passage  in  Swinburne.  The  chorus  sings  in  two-verse 
groups,  interrupted  by  three  verses  of  pentameter.  Alcestis 
wastes  away  in  the  same  manner  but  to  no  such  beautiful  music. 
(Cf.  Alcestis,  201  flf.) 

she  wanes  and  wastes, 
Drooping  her  head,  a  misery-burdened  weight; 
But  yet,  albeit  hardly  breathing  still, 
To  the  sun's  rays  fain  would  she  lift  her  eyes, 
As  nevermore,  for  the  last  time  now 
Destined  to  see  the  sun's  beams  and  his  orb. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  41 


The  chorus  adds  its  lament; 

Cry,  land  Phaeraean,  shrill  and  keen! 
Lift  up  thy  voice  to  wail  thy  best 
There  dying,  and  thy  queenliest 
Slow  wasting  to  the  gates  unseen. 

Hippolytus  cries  aloud  in  his  agony;  his  mind  is  on  his  pain. 
Meleager,  in  thirteen  stanzas,  reviews  his  past  life.  His  language 
is  full  of  dignity,  elegance,  and  poetic  beauty. 

Hippolytus  reproaches  his  father  for  his  fate: 

Woe,  woe  for  the  son 
By  the  doom  of  his  sire 
All  marred  and  undone. 
Through  my  head  leapeth  fire 
Of  agony  flashes,  and  throbbeth  my  brain  like  a  hard-smitten  lyre. 

For  gods'  sake  bear 
Me  gently,  each  thrall; 
Tho'u  to  right  have  a  care, 
Soft  let  your  hands  fall; 
Tenderly  bear  the  sore  mangled,  onstepping  in  tune,  one  and  all. 

The  unhappy  onbearing 
x\nd  cursed,  I  ween. 
Of  his  father's  own  erring, — 
Ah  Zeus,  hast  thou  seen? 
Innocent  I,  ever  fearing  the  gods,  who  was  wholly  heart-clean 

Above  all  men  beside, — 
Lo,  how  am  I  thrust 
Into  Hades  to  hide 
My  life  in  the  dust; 
All  vainly  I  reverenced  god,  and  in  vain  unto  man  was  I  just. 

Meleager  has  more  self-control,  and  withholds  all  blame  of 
his  mother: 

Let  your  hands  meet 
Round  the  weight  of  my  head; 
Lift  ye  my  feet 
As  the  feet  of  the  dead; 
For  thre  flesh  of  my  body  is  molten,  the  limbs  of  it  molten  as  lead. 

In  this  is  a  little  of  Phaedra's  appeal: 

Uplift  ye  my  body,  mine  head  upraise. 

Friends,  faint  be  my  limbs,  and  unknit  be  their  bands, 

Hold,  maidens,  my  rounded  arms  and  my  hands. 


42  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

Both  Meleager  and  Hippolytus  cry  for  death,  but  the  cry  of 
Meleager  is  like  that  of  a  delirious  man;  the  pain  of  Hippolytus  is 
more  poignant. 

Hipp.  1370ff.     Let  the  stricken  one  be; 
Ah,  mine  anguish  again; 
Give  ye  sleep  unto  me, 
Death,  salve  for  my  pain, 
The  sleep  of  the  sword  for  the  wretched,  I  long,  O  I  long  to  be  slain. 

Meleager  desires  to  die,  and  even  takes  thought  where  he 
wishes  to  lie  buried.  He  also  gets  a  vision  of  the  world  to  come. 
The  gods  are  to  blame  for  his  ill-fortune. 

The  years  are  hungry, 
They  wail  all  their  days; 
The  gods  wax  angry , 
And  weary  of  praise; 
And  who  shall  bridle  their  lips,  and  who  shall  straiten  their  ways? 

Hippolytus  thinks  only  of  his  pain: 

Ah  for  words  of  a  spell 
That  my  soul  might  take  flight 
From  the  tortures,  with  fell 
Unrelentings  that  smite; 
O  for  the  blackness  of  Hades,  the  sleep  of  Necessity's  night. 

Then  for  his  comfort  the  voice  of  Artemis  speaks,  and  clears 
him  of  all  imputation  of  wrong. 

Unhappy,  bowed  'neath  what  disaster's  yoke ! 
Thine  own  heart's  nobleness  hath  ruined  thee. 

He  recognizes  the  voice  at  once;  the  form  he  has  never  seen. 

Ah,  perfume  breath  celestial,  mid  my  pains 
I  feel  thee  and  mine  anguish  is  assuaged. 
Lo,  in  this  place  the  goddess  Artemis. 

Then  she  explains  to  him  his  plight  and  makes  it  clear  why 
she  could  not  save  him;  but  she  promises  him  venegance  and  a 
festival  and  a  memory  preserved  in  song.  She  urges  him  to 
cease  hating  his  father,  and,  seeing  the  approach  of  death,  she 
takes  her  leave. 

Farewell,  I  may  not  gaze  upon  the  dead. 
Nor  may  with  dying  gasps  pollute  my  sight. 
.^nd  now  I  see  that  thou  art  near  the  end. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  43 

His  last  words  are  to  his  father.  I  am  gone;  I  see  the  gates 
of  death;  I  absolve  you,  witness  Artemis.  My  strength  is  over- 
come; I  am  gone.  Cover  my  face  with  my  mantle.  The  whole 
scene  is  full  of  pathos,  particularly  where  the  youth  sees  that  his 
death  matters  little  to  the  goddess,  and  is  provoked  to  say. 

Farewell  to  thy  departing,  Maiden  blest; 

Light  falls  on  thee  long  friendship's  severance. 

Lo,  I  forgive  my  father  at  thy  suit, 

As  heretofore  have  I  obeyed  thy  word. 

And  o'er  my  eyes  e'en  now  the  darkness  draws. 

Take,  father,  take  my  body  and  upraise. 

Atalanta  regrets  coming  to  Calydon: 

I  would  that  with  feet 
Unsandalled,  unshod. 
Overbold,  overfleet, 
I  had  swum  not  nor  trod 
From  Arcadia  to  Calydon,  northward,  a  blast  of  the  envy  of  god. 

and  later 

I  would  that  as  water 
My  life's  blood  had  thawn, 
Or  as  winter's  wan  daughter 
Leaves  lowland  and  lawn 
Spring-stricken,  or  ever  mine  eyes  had  beheld  thee  made  dark  in  thy  dawn. 

Meleager  realizes  also  that  he  is  dying  for  the  sins  of  others 
as  well  as  for  his  own.     Taking  leave  of  his  father,  he  says, 

O  holy  head  of  Oeneus,  lo,  thy  son 
Guiltless,  yet  red  with  alien  blood,  yet  foul 
With  kinship  of  contaminated  lives, 
Lo,  for  their  blood  I  die;  and  mine  own  blood 
For  bloodshedding  of  mine  is  mixed  therewith, 
That  death  may  not  discern  me  from  my  kin. 

So  Hipp.  1378  ff. 

Dire  curse  of  my  father. 
Sins  long  ago  wrought 
Of  mine  ancestors  gather. 
Their  doom  tarries  not; 
But  the  scourge  overfloweth  the  innocent — wherefore  on  me  is  it  brought? 

Meleager  claims 

with  clean  heart  I  die  and  faultless  hand, 


44  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

just  as  Hippolytus, 

Innocent  I,  ever  fearing  the  gods,  who  was  wholly  heart-clean . 

So  Meleager  goes  down  to  the  dark; 

Thou  therefore  of  thy  love 
Salute  me  and  bid  fare  among  the  dead 
Well,  as  the  dead  fare;  for  the  best  man  dead 
Fares  sadly. 

Cf.  Od.  11,  488  ff ;  Eurip.  Fr.  537;  and  the  motto  of  this  play,  Eur. 
fr.  Mel.  536. 

Character  of  Erechtheus.  Erechtheus  may  be  viewed 
in  four  lights;  as  king,  warrior,  husband,  and  father.  In  the 
prologue  he  questions,  as  king,  his  mother  earth  as  to  the  cause 
of  the  plague  fallen  upon  his  state.  Proud  of  his  ancestry,  he 
pictures  his  land  in  loving  colors,  glances  at  impending  ruin,  and 
puns  on  the  name  of  his  adversary.  Then  he  wonders  why 
the  gods  have  sent  upon  him  'the  confluent  surge  of  loud  calamities.' 
His  speech  closes  with  an  appeal  for  help. 

As  a  warrior  he  is  one  of  those  stout  oaken  Marathon  fighters 
that  Aristophanes  gives  such  unstinted  praise.  In  Aeschylus 
the  type  is  well  cut.  He  does  not  temporize  or  haggle  about 
terms;  he  will  fight  and  die  or  live,  as  his  lot  lies  on  the  lap  of  the 
unknown  hour.  His  fate  is  known  to  him,  and  with  it  he  is  in 
accord.  By  the  Athenian  herald  he  is  shown  to  have  attained  a 
heroic  and  supernatural  end. 

For  Praxithea  he  is  all  love  and  admiration.  He  has  found 
her  always  wise  and  perfect  of  heart;  free  from  Hybris  in  pros- 
perity, patient  in  adversity.  Swinburne  has  succeeded  in  portray- 
ing two  strong  characters  in  perfect  accord.  Both  recognize  the 
might  of  Necessity;  both  feel  the  injustice  of  Fate,  while  regogniz- 
ing  the  importance  of  their  sacrifice  for  the  safety  of  their  city. 
The  daughter  too  accepts  her  doom  without  a  protest.  The 
crisis  has  swooped  suddenly  upon  them  all,  and  they  meet  it  with- 
out hesitation  and  with  clear  discernment.  In  the  Iphigenia 
at  Aulis  the  situation  is  somewhat  different.  Agamemnon, 
somewhat  craven  and  fearing  overmuch  the  host  (cf.  1.  1012)  has 
sent  for  his  daughter  for  the  alleged  purpose  of  giving  her  in 
marriage  to  Achilles.  His  duplicity  merits  all  the  scorn  poured 
upon  him  by  his  wife.     But  Iphigenia,  after  prayers  and  tears 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES  45 

and  lamentation,  in  a  sudden  change  of  heart  expresses  a  willing- 
ness to  die,  and  thus  brings  about  a  reconciliation.  Swinburne's 
characters  are  more  admirable;  Euripides',  more  human.  The 
English  poet  has  given  us  a  pair  of  philosophers  who  curb  their 
own  hearts  because  they  recognize  the  need;  the  Greek  has  given 
us  two  very  human  beings  who  bluster  and  rail  at  fortune,  to  fall 
before  it  in  the  end. 

As  a  father  Erechtheus  is  not  well  drawn.  Although  he  speaks 
very  tenderly  of  his  child,  he  does  not  speak  to  her  during  the 
entire  play.  On  the  other  hand,  some  of  the  finest  touches  in 
the  Iphigenia  come  in  the  scenes  where  father  and  daughter  meet. 
(1221  ff;  1255  ff.)  Agamemnon's  case  is  clear;  the  gods  have 
exacted  a  price  for  the  overthrow  of  Ilium, — aprice  which  Agamem- 
non is  not  willing  to  pay,  for  it  concerns  him  too  personally.  But 
his  fellow-chieftains,  less  interested  in  the  price,  and  more  in  the 
profit,  insist  on  payment.  It  is  not  so  with  Erechtheus.  The 
god  so  set  the  price  of  ransom  that  the  royal  family  must  perish  in 
either  alternative.  To  win,  Chthonia  must  be  sacrificed,  and  the 
king  must  fall;  while  the  capture  of  the  city  meant  the  ruin  of  all. 
Erechtheus,  under  provocation,  assumes  a  temper  toward  the 
gods  similar  to  Althaea's,  but  under  better  control.  He  draws 
a  sharp  distinction  between  the  saved  city  and  his  own  situation. 
The  gods  give  to  the  citizens 

Life  of  their  children,  flower  of  aU  their  seed, 
For  all  their  travail  fruit,  for  all  their  hopes 
Harvest;  but  we,  for  all  our  good  things  we 
Have  at  their  hands  which  fill  all  these  folk  full. 
Death,  barrenness,  child-slaughter,  curses,  cares, 
Sea-leaguer  and  land-shipwreck; 

He  graces  Apollo  with  all  his  epithets,  but  reserves  his  praise. 
The  grim  situation  he  accepts  because 

save  this 
No  word  is  left  us  and  no  hope  alive. 

He  recognizes  the  omnipotence  of  the  gods;  of  their  wisdom  and 
loving-kindness  he  says  nothing.  A  grim  character,  his  language 
is  very  compressed;  he  says  more  in  a  line  than  is  the  wont  of  most 
tragic  characters.  He  is  stronger  even  than  the  Aeschylean  Aga- 
memnon, who  also  put  on  the  yoke  of  Necessity  and  became  the 


46  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  AESCHYLUS  AND  EURIPIDES 

slayer  of  his  child.  Both  submit  to  divine  decree,  in  regard  to 
the  justice  of  which  both  are  in  the  dark.  Agamemnon  found 
it  hard  to  sacrifice  his  daughter,  but  harder  to  become  a  Liponaus; 
the  word  is  strong:  so  of  two  evils  he  chose  what  seemed  the  lesser, 
and  ojffered  his  child  to  the  malice  of  stubborn  winds. 

Praxithea.  Praxithea  is  in  every  way  worthy  of  the  love 
and  respect  of  the  king.  Brave,  dutiful,  submissive,  self-sacri- 
ficing, she  sums  up  in  her  first  speech  her  whole  philosophy  of  life. 
Her  heart  is  for  her  land;  'firm  let  it  stand,  whatever  bleed  or  fall.' 
In  her  treatment  of  her  daughter  she  displays  the  attitude  of  the 
best  women  in  Greek  drama.  Swinburne  could  not,  of  course, 
save  her  from  the  long  Euripidean  rhesis  wherein  she  calls  the 
gods  to  witness  her  ills,  and  shows  her  great  antiquarian  knowledge, 
and  her  familiarity  with  the  institutions  of  gods  and  men.  She 
closes  with  a  childhood  picture  in  true  Eripidean-Swinburnian 
manner.  Both  writers  put  such  speech  in  the  mouths  of  women, 
making  them  the  source  of  diverse  information  and  the  fountain- 
head  of  tears.  Swinburne,  although  he  condemned  somewhat 
bitterly  the  fragment  of  Euripides,  on  which  he  based  this  rhesis, 
owes  to  it  more  than  he  admits,  and  has  not  attained  any  startling 
superiority,  as  he  implies  in  his  letter.  (See  Gosse,  p.  231.) 

Praxithea,  in  her  farewell  to  her  daughter,  comments  on  the 
gods  in  Euripidean  fashion.  She  is  innocent  of  wrongdoing;  she 
has  suffered  much  for  many  reasons,  without  meriting  any  of  it; 
but  she  will  hold  her  peace.  Having  shown  that  from  the  heart- 
less gods  comes  no  help,  she  breaks  into  a  fine  piece  of  Euripidean 
tenderness  and  pathos.  The  picture  of  the  babe  is  one  of  the 
finest  ever  drawn.     For  her  people  she  gives  her  child  to 

Death  and  the  under  gods  who  crave 

So  much  for  what  they  give. 

She  sets  aside,  however,  for  the  sake  of  her  country  her  personal 
loss;  it  wrests  from  Ruin  the  power  to  take  hold  on  Athens. 

When  the  herald  comes  to  report  the  battle,  she  greets  him 
with  a  fierce  eagerness. 

Man,  what  thy  mother  bare  thee  born  to  say, 

Speak;  for  no  word  yet  wavering  on  thy  lip 

Can  wound  me  worse  than  thought  forestalls  or  fear. 

Learning  the  death  of  her  husband  and  the  safety  of  the  city,  she 
praises  the  gods  of  Athens  and  prays  for  death. 


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•mit 

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iBOOrfRr 

"^      <!««     ,.,, 

APF  10^975   '  9 

(^V^--»^''' 

\ 

LD  21-32m-3,'74                               General  Library 
(R7057sl0)476— A-32                    University  of  California 
Berkeley 

